By Opheera McDoom
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - Sudan could tip into "freefall" unless the international community helps to resolve its multiple crises, Britain's minister for Africa said on the sidelines of an African summit on Monday.
A lack of progress towards resolving the 5-1/2-year-old Darfur conflict, fighting in the oil-rich Abyei region claimed by both north and south Sudan, and tension with neighbouring Chad were all critical issues, Mark Malloch-Brown told Reuters.
"We've got to find a way to help Sudan and its constituent parts start to work through these problems and solve them, otherwise ... there could be a dangerous tipping point where the country goes into a freefall."
In particular, he said a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force, UNAMID, must deploy fast in Sudan's Darfur region to help the efforts of a new joint U.N./AU mediator for Darfur, Burkino Faso Foreign Minister Djibril Bassole.
International experts estimate 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes in Darfur since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in 2003, accusing the central government of neglect.
"Unless UNAMID deployment rapidly ramps up ... it in a sense removes the critical underpinning and momentum for peace which comes out of improved security," Malloch-Brown said.
Bassole's appointment was officially confirmed by the United Nations on Monday. Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor made it clear that Khartoum had no objections.
"It's okay -- we are happy," he told Reuters. "He's a foreign minister and he has held many ministerial positions and is a military man."
Separately, the top U.S. official on Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said it was unlikely that talks about normalising relations with the United States would resume before the U.S. elections in November. Washington has Sudan on a list of state sponsors of terrorism and operates economic sanctions against it.
"We were very clear from the outset ... normalisation depends on results on the ground and clearly things have not improved in Darfur and things have deteriorated in Abyei," she told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.
Among the terms of Sudan's 2005 north-south was a distribution of power and of the wealth stemming from Sudan's oil output of 500,000 barrels per day.
But at least 89 people died in May in clashes between northern and southern forces in Abyei, close to major oilfields coveted by both sides.
"At this point it doesn't look favourable because they haven't implemented those agreements," Frazer said.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations)
(Editing by Jackie Frank)
