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KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - The new French foreign minister said Sudan's president told him in a meeting Monday that he now fully agreed to a "hybrid" U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force of more than 20,000 to stop the bloodshed in Darfur but was adamant that all of them must come from Africa.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner met Sudanese President al-Bashir for an hour in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to press him to commit to a 23,000-strong joint force for Darfur which the United Nations and western nations have been advocating for many months.
During their closed-door meeting, Kouchner said al-Bashir also brought up Sudan's embattled relations with the U.S., which recently beefed up unilateral sanctions against the regime. Kouchner said he was not convinced sanctions were useful, but the Sudanese "seem clearly affected by this issue, considering how much they raised it."
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