The United States welcomed on Thursday Sudan's readiness to implement a United Nations plan to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region by sending a joint UN- African Union peacekeeping force there.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir had approved the plan in a letter to outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and that deployment of the first phase of the three-phase plan is under way, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said.

It was a "positive movement," Casey said of the latest decision by the Sudanese government.

In late August 2006, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution which calls for the deployment of up to 20,000 UN peacekeepers to replace the ill-equipped AU contingent in Darfur.

Khartoum was adamantly opposed to the UN deployment in Darfur but has come under intense international pressure to reconsider.

It was reported that in a letter to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan dated on Saturday, al-Bashir said Sudan is ready to start immediately implementation of the Darfur peace plan as agreed at a high-level meeting in Ethiopia last November and at a Nov. 30 meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council in Abuja, Nigeria.

The letter, which was circulated among members of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, also stressed that "the size of the force shall be determined by the African Union and the United Nations, taking into account all relevant factors and the situation on the ground as well as the requirements for it to effectively discharge its mandate."

The United Nations was reportedly to deploy a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force in Darfur, made up of 17,000 troops and 3,000 police officers, compared to the current strength of just 7,000 of AU force in Darfur to monitor an area roughly the size of France.

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than two million forced from their homes by the fighting and a widespread campaign of rape, killing and burning in non-Arab villages since the Darfur revolt began in early 2003.

Source: Xinhua