Carter then asked to visit a nearby school for displaced people where he could meet their leaders. Carter and the delegation walked in the hot sun to the nearby school built by displaced Sudanese for their children.
Sudanese security said for safety reasons they could not allow such a big diversion from the scheduled programme. "I accepted their visit to the school but I can't go further than that. We cannot be that flexible," said a spokesman.
SPEED HELP
The elders toured Darfur days after 10 AU personnel were killed in the deadliest attack on their forces in the remote western region.
The African Union said it was still investigating the attack on their base in the rebel-held southeastern town of Haskanita to determine who carried it out. Rebel splinter groups in the region have been blamed, but key insurgent leaders have denied ordering the assault.
The AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai on Tuesday told the elders AU peacekeepers were outgunned and outnumbered by rebels and militias in Darfur.
Desmond Tutu on Wednesday called on world governments to speed up the deployment of a replacement force of 26,000 joint U.N.-AU peacekeepers, saying the under-equipping of the 7,000 African Union forces currently on the ground was a "disgrace".
"I am making a call to people of good will ... for goodness sake, tell your governments to get off their butts," Tutu told Reuters.
"It is unacceptable that the AU mission is not better equipped. They couldn't even evacuate the injured after the Haskanita attack because they don't have military helicopters," he added
Carter said Bashir had promised to allow international observers into Sudan to make sure national elections scheduled for 2009 were "honest and fair".
International experts say some 200,000 people have died in Darfur since mainly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003. The United States says Arab militia mobilised by Sudan have committed genocide, a term European and African governments have avoided.
