Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched on the UN headquarters in Khartoum on Wednesday in protest at the possibility of Western military intervention to deal with a humanitarian crisis in the western region of Darfur.
In Addis Ababa, a spokesman for the African Union (AU) said the organisation may boost the number of troops to be deployed in Darfur to 2,000 from 300, subject to the move being approved at a meeting of its members.
Protesters, many from organised pro-government groups but including many ordinary citizens, carried anti-American banners and chanted slogans attacking UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for his close alignment with US policy.
"Annan, Annan, shame, shame," they shouted. "Annan, Annan, you coward. We will not be ruled by the Americans."
The organisers said at least 35,000 people took part in the protest - in line with independent assessments of the crowd.
AU spokesman Adam Thiam said the troop proposal needed the approval of the AU's 15-member security body, the Peace and Security Council. The body would also look at broadening the original mandate of the AU force to include a peacekeeping role as well as protecting observers monitoring a cease-fire between the government and two rebel groups, he added.
There are 96 unarmed AU observers in Darfur, and Sudan has reluctantly agreed to an armed force to protect them.
The conflict has displaced more than 1 million people in Darfur, mainly as a result of the raping, looting and burning by the Janjaweed militias, which the government has used as auxiliaries in an attempt to suppress the rebellion by settled non-Arab peoples.
The UN Security Council has given Sudan 30 days to show it is serious about disarming and prosecuting the Janjaweed.
The protest on Wednesday reflected the government's success in convincing ordinary Sudanese that Western military intervention in Darfur is an imminent danger.
In fact, no countries other than those in the AU have gone beyond the preliminary planning stage, and the United States has shown no inclination to send troops to Darfur.
But influential evangelical Christian groups are pressing President George W. Bush to consider sending troops to stop what they and the US Congress call genocide in Darfur.
Hassan Ahmed, a Sudanese protester in his 60s, said: "If they want to send African troops, then those are from among us, but we will not allow a single American foot to rest on Darfur soil." He said he was not a government loyalist.
In an interview with BBC radio, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the 30 days in the UN resolution was not a deadline for Sudan to do everything asked of it.
"What we need is to do something tangible according to the agreement which we signed with Kofi Annan," he added.
The Sudanese government has won considerable sympathy in the Arab world, where the United States, the United Nations and Britain are viewed with considerable scepticism because of their positions on Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters on Wednesday that Egypt wanted Arab foreign ministers, at their meeting in Cairo on Sunday, to support Khartoum's efforts to comply with the UN Security Council resolution.