BEIJING, April 8--A Chinese delegation in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region met officials and visited camps for the internally displaced, state media reported Sunday.
According to AP, China has come under increasing international pressure to use its influence with Sudan to resolve the ethnic conflict that has left at least 200,000 dead and forced more than 2.5 million from their homes since 2003.
A permanent member of the United Nations’ Security Council, China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil and sells it weapons and military aircraft.
The delegation’s leader Zhai Juan visited Abu Shouk, a camp in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, where some 50,000 internally displaced are living, and met Osman Yusouf Kibir, the region’s governor.
Abu Shouk officials said the lives of the refugees at the camp were “stable and natural,“ the agency reported from Khartoum.
The Chinese delegation, which arrived Friday for a four-day trip, also visited a camp of 14,000 people in Nyala, South Darfur, and inspected the camp’s health center and primary school, the report said.
There, they met South Darfur Gov. Al-Haj Atalmannan Idris, who said the situation in his state was “stable and improving“ although there was “sporadic fighting,“ Xinhua reported.
The conflict erupted in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated central government, accusing it of neglect.
The Sudanese government is accused of unleashing militias known as the janjaweed, which are blamed for the bulk of the conflict’s atrocities.
The United Nations and Sudan agreed in November on a plan backed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for the incremental deployment of a joint African Union-UN force of 20,000 peacekeepers, but Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has since backed off the deal, saying he would only allow a larger AU force with technical and logistical support from the United Nations.

A supporter holds a French flag while attending a meeting of France's National Front leader and presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, in Marseille, Southern France, April 6.

PARIS, April 8--The official campaign in France’s presidential election opens Monday, two weeks ahead of the first round of voting, with frontrunners Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal battling to ensure they make the all-important second round.
The vote is seen as one of the most exciting and important in recent French history, marking the transition to a new generation of leaders and defining the country’s response to issues of globalization and national identity, reported AFP.
Royal and Sarkozy continue to lead the race by several points, but opinion polls also show that the centrist candidate Francois Bayrou and the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen are still very much in the running. In theory any two of the four could make it into the deciding round of voting on May 6.
On Monday all 12 contenders enter the final straight, with official rules coming into effect for campaign broadcasts and postering at polling booths. A hectic nationwide series of public rallies and stump meetings then kicks in up to the first vote on April 22.
France is choosing a successor to Jacques Chirac, 74, the veteran leader who has been in office since 1995.
Analysts said that behind the heated exchanges lay a shared interest on the part of the two candidates to turn the campaign into a classic left-right confrontation and squeeze out their competitors.
The latest survey, an IFOP poll for the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, gave Sarkozy 30 percent of the first-round vote, a two percentage point jump from a similar survey last week.
Royal fell one percentage point to 22 percent, her worst score since January, but she was still ahead of Bayrou at 19 percent.
But there are still some 18 million out of a total of 44 million voters who have not yet made up their minds who they will vote for, according to a CSA opinion poll for Sunday’s Le Parisien newspaper.

ROME, April 8--Some 3,000 people staged a march in Rome on Sunday to press upon the Italian government to push the United Nations to declare a universal moratorium on the death penalty.
The marchers, who were due to end their procession at Saint Peter’s Square just about the time Pope Benedict XVI was due to deliver his traditional Easter address, held placards saying “We are against,“ and “We want a UN moratorium soon.“
The march was organized by Marco Panella and Emma Bonino, who lead the small Radical party, as well as the Roman Catholic Sant’Egidio Community, AFP reported.
“Everybody agrees (that the death penalty should be abolished) but nobody does anything,“ said Panella.
Bonino, a former EU commissioner who doubles up as the external trade minister, added: “We are here to back the government initiative to get the UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution on the moratorium.“
The Italian government had said in January, when it became a member of the UN Security Council, that it would use its tenure to get such a resolution passed but has not forwarded any such proposal yet.

WASHINGTON,
April 8--Democrats appear to be gaining the upper hand in the all-important dash for cash ahead of the 2008 US presidential elections, unveiling war chests already well-stuffed with wads of money.
Together the top six hopefuls chasing the Democratic Party nomination have raised some $65 million in the first quarter of the year, compared with 50.5 million in the rival Republican ranks, AFP said.
The figures would seem to be overturning tradition, which holds that the Republicans are wealthier, better organized and normally rake in larger donations.
In fact, the disparities are not as wide as they might seem at first glance.
During the 2004 campaign, George W. Bush, who went on to win a second term in office, pulled in some $270 million, while his Democrat opponent John Kerry fell just slightly short at 235 million.
During the last campaign, Democrat Howard Dean launched into the primaries bolstered by a record amount of funds at his disposal, most of which he had collected via the Internet.
Since then, others have been quick to copy his methods, with potential candidates honing their Web skills either to push their message or to appeal for funds.
The differences between the two camps also reflects the current opinion polls, with Bush’s ratings having sunk to their lowest levels ever.
Only a third of all Americans approve of his performance in office, and fewer still believe the war in Iraq can be won.
It is therefore hardly surprising that fewer Americans want to see a Republican candidate returned to the White House, with none of the leading Republican hopefuls having denounced the war.
Instead hundreds of thousands are opening their checkbooks for the Democrats, with frontrunner Hillary Clinton saying she won donations from 50,000 supporters, second-place Barack Obama claiming 100,000 individual donations and John Edwards 40,000.

KIEV, Ukraine, April 8--The political crisis in Ukraine intensified on Sunday as President Viktor Yushchenko vowed to press ahead with early elections in a combative speech in an Easter broadcast to the divided nation, AFP reported.
The holiday however did not prevent hundreds of anti-Yushchenko protestors from gathering on Independence Square in the center of the capital Kiev, many waving the country’s blue-and-yellow flag and as others danced to folk songs.
In his televised Easter message late Saturday, Yushchenko accused his opponents, led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, of trying to impose “tyranny“ and “managed democracy“ in Ukraine.
The crisis began Monday when the president ordered the dissolution of parliament and early elections for May 27, triggering a defiant response from the pro-Russian prime minister and bringing thousands of protesters into the streets of the capital.
“My decision is legitimate and constitutional and there will be no going back,“ pro-West leader Yushchenko said in the Easter speech, delivered from outside the Saint Sophia church in central Kiev.
His rival Yanukovych also issued an Easter message posted on the government website Sunday in which he expressed confidence that the crisis “will be successfully resolved through democracy and supremacy of the law.“
Tens of thousands of Yanukovych supporters have protested in the capital of this former Soviet republic over the past week and hundreds have kept up a round-the-clock vigil in a tent camp outside the parliament.
Critics have accused the president of mounting a coup by illegally canceling the results of 2006 parliamentary elections deemed fair by international observers.

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, April 8--Israel launched an air strike against suspected Gaza militants on Saturday, killing one and wounding two, as it made good on threats to get tough over persistent rocket fire from the territory.
Israeli fire also wounded a Palestinian militant commander on its most wanted list in the West Bank town of Jenin in what the militant group called a deliberate assassination attempt. Palestinian medics named the militant killed in the Gaza raid as Fuad Maaruf, 22, an activist of the leftist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The DFLP said Maaruf was killed by missiles from an Israeli helicopter as he was taking part in an “extended ambush“ of Israeli troops operating inside the Gaza Strip alongside militants of the Islamic Jihad group, AFP said.
Witnesses said the helicopters opened fire on an area east of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip while several Israeli tanks advanced a few meters into the territory. The Israeli military confirmed the air raid but denied any ground incursion.
“The helicopters opened fire after suspect movements near the security barrier (between Israel and the Gaza Strip) to the east of Jabaliya,“ an army spokesman said.
“Some armed men were preparing to plant a bomb near the security barrier.“
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit condemned the raid, calling in a statement for “an immediate halt to all acts... that complicate the situation.“
A Palestinian rocket hit a building in the southern Israeli border town of Sderot later on Saturday, damaging it but causing no casualties, in an attack claimed by Islamic Jihad.
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas again appealed for rocket attacks to stop, calling them absurd.
“Everyone, especially the presidential guard, the security forces, must work to establish order and security, eliminate security chaos and make these absurd rocket attacks stop,“ he said in Gaza.

LONDON, April 8--British troops could be serving in Iraq for at least another five years, a newspaper reported on Sunday, quoting what it said was a confidential military planning document.
The Sunday Telegraph said the document, parts of which had been disclosed to the newspaper, “reveals that troops will be serving on operations in the Persian Gulf until at least 2012.“
It said the document, which listed units to be sent on operations, showed a mechanized brigade was scheduled to return to Iraq in 2012, reported Reuters.
Asked about the report, a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said: “The military plans a long way ahead for all possibilities and eventualities. This does not mean that any of these possibilities are going to happen.“
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in February Britain would reduce its troop levels in Iraq from 7,100 to 5,500 in the coming months, but its soldiers would stay in the country into 2008, “for as long as we are wanted and have a job to do.“
On Thursday, four British soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in a roadside bomb blast that destroyed their armored vehicle in the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
The deaths brought to six the number of British soldiers killed in Iraq last week, making it one of the deadliest for British forces since the US-led invasion in March 2003. Altogether, 140 British soldiers have died in Iraq.