OTTOWA (AFP) - Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier will visit Sudan on Tuesday for talks with government officials, where he will call on them to address the ongoing violence in Darfur, his office said.

During the March 25 to 28 trip, he will meet senior government officials to discuss the situation in the conflict-riven region as well as addressing human rights, his office said in a statement released overnight Sunday.

The Darfur conflict, which the United Nations says has claimed the lives of about 200,000 people and displaced 2.2 million, has raged since 2003 when rebel groups demanded a greater share of the country's resources.

Arab militias aligned to the government in Khartoum have been accused of horrendous violence against civilians as well as soldiers in quelling the rebellion. The United States has described the violence as genocide.

Bernier will meet with representatives from the United Nations and African Union, which has deployed a joint peacekeeping mission to Darfur. It is planned to number 26,000 troops but has been slow to get off the ground.

The foreign minister will also hold talks with representatives of southern Sudan and press for the implementation of a 2005 peace deal that ended 21 years of war in the south.

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