Sudan is expected to agree to allow some 7,000 African Union (AU) peacekeepers to stay in the troubled Sudanese western region of Darfur for three more months, despite the expiry of the AU force’s mandate there on 30 September.

“We’re hoping that when the African Union Peace and Security Council meets in a few days, they will extend the AMIS mandate through the end of the year,” said US Ambassador John Bolton after a Security Council meeting on Sudan on Monday, referring to the peacekeeping force, known as the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS.)

“That will provide the basis on which AMIS will continue and we can strengthen AMIS as we [are] simultaneously preparing for the UN handover,” Bolton added. Underfunded, undermanned, and lacking strong logistical support, the AU force is in desperate need of bolstering as it is thinly stretched across Darfur, a region the size of France.

The Sudanese government had been opposing an extension of the AMIS mandate past 30 September, and says it is still against allowing UN peacekeepers to deploy to Darfur.

But some observers now hope that Sudan will agree to the extended AMIS presence. An AU meeting on the fringes of the UN General Assembly, originally scheduled for Monday, has been postponed until Wednesday to accommodate Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, himself due to address the UN General Assembly this week.

Bashir’s First Vice President, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, announced in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum this week that he supported a strengthened African Union force, fuelling hopes that Sudan is to accept the continuation of the AU force after all.

Many observers feel that getting Sudan to agree to some aspects of UN Security Council resolution 1706, including allowing AU troops to stay, would at the very least not leave the civilian population in Darfur totally unprotected.

It could also buy time for Sudan’s allies to work on changing the minds of key political players in Khartoum towards accepting the deployment of a UN transitional peacekeeping force of about 20,000 troops, as stipulated in the resolution.

“This is a practical and humanitarian set of objectives, with no objective to interfere with the sovereignty of the Sudanese people,” said Lord David Triesman, Britain’s Minister for Africa, who spoke to a few journalists Monday morning in New York, before addressing the UN Security Council on Sudan in the afternoon.

A number of ideas are on the table to make a UN force more palatable to the Sudanese, including a proposed package of incentives created by the British government, and announced by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Saturday. Incentives could include dealing with some of Sudan’s debt, ending the suspension of some development aid, and lifting sanctions.

“If there is peace and security, and everybody is taking the full part in the reconstruction of Sudan, I don’t think anyone would want to impede the progress by the continuation of sanctions,” said Triesman.

Violence has only increased since Sudan’s government and the largest armed faction of Darfur’s main rebel group signed a peace agreement in May.

“The Darfur Peace Agreement is only four months old, but it is nearly dead. It is in a coma,” said Jan Pronk, the UN’s Special Envoy to Sudan told Security Council members at an open meeting on Sudan on Monday in New York.

Rebels have split into factions in North Darfur, among them a rebel alliance which recently launched an attack into neighbouring West Kordofan province. “Sadly, it provided the government with an excuse for continuous attacks and air raids, under the pretext that the civilian population had to be protected,” said Pronk. “However, it is an outright violation of the DPA.”

Pronk told council members that a truce among the factions was necessary to move the peace process along, as well as talks involving not just the government and groups that signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) in May, but other factions outside the fold.

Bolton announced in the Sudan council meeting that the US and Denmark plan to hold a ministerial meeting on Sudan on Friday this week with the other 13 council members. South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda, Chad, Egypt, and Algeria have been invited to attend.

With the British incentives package, time is of the essence, according to Triesman. “We’ll try and do it as rapidly as possible,” he said, noting that Prime Minister Blair was going to be working on the initiative over the next few weeks.

“We are beyond the point when we should be overly concerned with people saving face. We should be concerned with saving lives,” Treisman said.

More than 250,000 people, the majority of them civilians, are now estimated by sources including US statisticians to have died as a result of the Darfur conflict, which began in 2003. The UN says that to date, more than 1.9 million people have also been displaced. Security remains particularly precarious for them and for humanitarian workers as well.