Sudan must allow a team of U.N. personnel into Darfur and formally accept an international force for the area by year's end or face unspecified U.S. steps next year, a U.S. special envoy said yesterday.

Andrew Natsios, President Bush's special envoy for Sudan, told reporters he delivered the message to Sudan's president, Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, during a visit to Khartoum this month.

U.S. officials have voiced growing frustration at Sudan's refusal to allow international troops to go to Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in three years of fighting that the United States says is genocide.

"We have told the Sudanese that we have to move along to our own strategic process in the United States government and we will do that beginning in the new year if we do not see some kind of progress . . . between now and the end of the year," Natsios told reporters.

While Natsios declined to say what Washington might do if Sudan fails to act soon, the United States and others are considering options from travel bans on Sudanese officials and an assets freeze to imposing a "no-fly" zone in Darfur.

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