A top United Nations relief official said on Friday the world has failed to provide a lasting solution to the crisis in Sudan's volatile region of Darfur where a three-year fighting has killed thousands of people and displaced million others.

Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, Under-Secretary- General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said the world has failed to put pressure on Khartoum and rebels to reach a solution at the negotiation process.

Egeland, who was barred by Sudan early this week from visiting its western Darfur region even though Khartoum later reversed its decision, also blamed the international community of not providing security in the troubled region.

"The world is failing Darfur on two fronts...the world is not providing sufficient pressure on the political parties to make peace a solution to this crisis and two, the world is not providing security," Egeland told a news conference after launching a regional appeal for Horn of Africa region in Nairobi.

The UN top envoy was scheduled to visit western Sudan to assess UN relief operations assisting hundreds of thousands of people.

But Khartoum rejected his subsequent requests to go to the capital Khartoum and then to fly over Darfur en route to Chad, saying Egeland's visits to Darfur and Khartoum, in the Muslim part of the country, were too sensitive because his country, Norway, had published the offensive cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

The move sparked the most serious crisis between the two sides since it became clear that the UN was intending to take over peacekeeping operations from the beleaguered African Union (AU).

Egeland called the excuse ridiculous, arguing that Sudan's government wanted to prevent him from seeing the deteriorated humanitarian situation in Darfur.

The Khartoum authorities later backtracked on its decision after the UN and European Union protested.

But speaking in Nairobi, Egeland welcomed the change of heart but said it was too late for him to visit the Africa's largest country, where the UN is heavily involved in trying both to ease the Darfur crisis and to promote the rehabilitation of the recently pacified South.

"I just heard from the media that I am welcome in Khartoum and Darfur but this is too late. We have also not been officially notified," he said.

Egeland said his presence in Darfur and visits with refugees in Chad would have drawn much-needed attention to the deteriorating situation in the volatile Darfur region.

He called the situation in Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world right now, saying about 200,000 people had been forced from their homes in the past two months alone.

"Are we then being an alibi for lack of political security action. We have just enough to keep the people alive because we don't at all change their lives in human kind of situation in camps," he said.

The UN has indicated it could send peacekeepers by the end of the year or at the beginning of 2007 to take over from AU troops, which have failed to restore peace in Darfur.

Since the war broke out in the vast western Sudanese region more than three years ago, the combined effect of fighting and a dire humanitarian crisis has left up to 300,000 people dead and more than two million displaced, according to some estimates.

Source: Xinhua