Straw demands efforts to stem Darfur crisis

Straw said the authorities had made some advances in opening up the region to relief agencies and providing protection from the Arab militias it sponsored to crush ethnic minority rebels, but said more needed to be done.

It was "the scale of the problem" that made the biggest impression, Straw told Britain's domestic Press Association news agency as he toured the Abu Shouk camp in northern Darfur.

"I knew the numbers, but it is one thing to know the numbers, it is quite another thing to come here, to survey this camp, and to realise that there are more than 50,000 people here but that is only one 20th of the people displaced as a result of the conflict.

"I think that the government of Sudan has made progress in some fields. Humanitarian access is much better. Security within the camps is better.

"But there is a very great deal to be done before these and 1.2 million like them feel reassured enough to go back to their villages.

"That requires a real effort by the government of Sudan to provide for their safety and also to ensure that there is progress in the peace talks."

Straw was referring to negotiations in the Nigerian capital of Abuja with representatives of the two Darfur rebel groups, which went into a second day Tuesday with the rebels voicing pessimism about Khartoum's readiness to open up to the non-Arab minorities, who together make up nearly half of Sudan's population.