Rice's Crew Roughed Up In Sudan

Secretary Of State Protests Treatment Of Advisers, Press With Her

(CBS/AP)  In the area she toured, some of the 70,000 displaced Darfur villagers had tried to add cheer to the hot, sandy expanse by planting pink and magenta flowers outside the doorways of their plywood and canvass huts.

Prior to her meeting with el-Bashir, Rice had said the United States is making a difference to relieve a refugee crisis and African peacekeeping troops are helping to stop atrocities.

"We are not where we were a year ago," Rice said Wednesday, ahead of her first trip to Sudan as secretary of state. "We are in a different circumstance and the United States has spent a great deal of money and a lot of diplomatic and other energy to try and bring this conflict to a conclusion."

War-induced hunger and disease have killed more than 180,000 people and driven more than 2 million from their homes in what Rice reaffirmed Wednesday was a case of genocide.

Sudan formed a new reconciliation government this month, following a peace agreement to end a 21-year-year civil war between the Muslim north and the mainly Christian and animist south that killed an estimated 2 million people.

El-Bashir remains in charge of the new government with former black African rebel leader John Garang installed as a new vice president. On Tuesday, Garang dissolved his guerrilla movement and dismissed all government officials in 10 former rebel-controlled southern states.

The United States has held the Arab-dominated former government at arm's length, operating an embassy without a full ambassador and listing Sudan, Africa's largest country, among the nations sponsoring terrorism.

In addition to short-term humanitarian needs, the United States and others are trying to prevent the temporary camps from becoming permanent fixtures in Darfur.