UN Security Council members on Sunday said they had assurances from Sudan that command and control of a joint African Union-UN force in Darfur would be under the world body.
After months of talks, threats and negotiations, Khartoum agreed to at least 20,000 troops and police for Darfur, but had said that most soldiers should come from Africa and command and control would be under the AU.
The United Nations would be reluctant to fund a mission where it did not have overall control.
"The (Sudanese foreign) minister made that very clear that the command and control is a UN process," said South African ambassador Dumisani Kumalo. "He made that very, very clear."
Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, Emyr Jones Parry, agreed: "The minister gave unequivocal assurances that the agreement proposed by the African Union and United Nations is accepted without condition and that the priority now is to implement it," he told reporters.
Parry declined to say whether the world body would now agree to fund the mission as requested by the African Union. The comments were made after meeting a group of senior Khartoum government officials.
The UN Security Council representatives are due to hold two hours of talks with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. But Darfur rebels added a word of caution.
"They should put more pressure on the Khartoum government and not rely on Khartoum's statements alone," said rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) senior figure Ahmed Abdel Shafie.
The wording of the AU-UN report detailing the command and control of the force is vague, as more specific recommendations that the United Nations have overall control were removed following protests by the AU, diplomats said.
Since a peace deal last year signed by only one of three negotiating rebel factions, the insurgents have split into more than a dozen difference movements, hindering a joint AU-UN push to reenergize a peace process.
Law and order has collapsed in Darfur with almost daily ambushes on aid convoys and even a struggling AU peacekeeping operation has come under attack, losing dozens of vehicles and equipment.
The Security Council has not yet ruled out the threat of UN sanctions on Sudan, and diplomats said there had been real discussions about imposing a no-fly zone in Darfur and an arms embargo on the entire country.
Aid agencies worry a no-fly zone would endanger the world's largest humanitarian operation in the vast west, where most staff, and even supplies, are moved by air because of banditry on the roads.
Sudan's south, which signed a deal to end a separate and bloodier civil war in January 2005, also worry about the effect of sanctions on efforts to rebuild the war-torn south and to transform their guerrilla soldiers into a modern army.
Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003 accusing central government of neglecting the remote region bordering Chad. International experts estimate some 200,000 have died over four years of rape, killing, looting and disease, which has driven 2.5 million from their homes.
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