UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said on Friday that the Sudanese government has finalized an agreement it reached Wednesday with the United Nations on steps to disarm in the next 30 days the Arab militia accused of cruelly attacking black Africans in the troubled western Darfur region.

Eckhard told reporters that the agreement will be made public after it is officially signed on Monday by Jan Pronk, UN special representative for Sudan, and Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail.

The deal, struck on Wednesday night by Pronk and Ismail, also commits Khartoum to improving security in and around the camps for the estimated 1.2 million internally displaced people in Darfur.

Eckhard said the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is planning to deploy eight observers to Darfur over the next few days to monitor the disarmament process.

Earlier in the day, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said that Egypt welcomes a Sudan-UN agreement on steps to be taken to solve the Darfur crisis.

"Egypt will support any agreement to be reached by Sudan and the United Nations," Abul Gheit said.

Abul Gheit said he hopes that all parties concerned would act in compliance with the agreement.

Hearing the settlement of the agreement between the United Nations and the Sudanese government, France urged on Friday all parties in Sudan's Darfur region to reach a political agreement.

"France invites all parties to resume, without condition under the direction of the African Union, the dialogue to reach a political agreement, which can ultimately settle the crisis in Darfur," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecile Pozzo Di Borgo.

While the international community celebrated the finalization of the UN-Sudan agreement, a UN investigator, after a visit to Darfur in June, said on Friday that the Sudanese government was largely to be blamed for a humanitarian disaster in the region and its responsibility for large numbers of killings in the region was beyond doubt.

Investigator Asma Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer, said that his visit found overwhelming evidence that government forces and militia they backed had executed large numbers of civilians.

On Friday, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) approved emergency food aid worth more than 30 million US dollars for Sudan's Darfur region.

USAID's Office of Food for Peace will donate 31,700 metric tons of food, including corn-soya blend, sorghum, split peas, lentils and vegetable oil, through the UN World Food Program.

With this contribution, USAID has approved a total of 118,400 metric tons of food worth more than 110 million dollars for Darfur.

During her visit to Abeche, Chad, French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said on Friday that France will continue to support more than 1 million refugees from Darfur, Sudan, with all means necessary.

Alliot-Marie said that from the humanitarian perspective, France is willing to help the refugees, but cannot solve all problems alone. She also called on other EU countries to give a hand.