PARIS – France and Britain will push for a U.N. resolution to dispatch African Union and United Nations peacekeepers to Darfur, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Friday.

Following their first meeting since both took office, Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said they will together lobby the U.N. Security Council to act.

“People are dying and people are suffering and it must stop,” Sarkozy said at a news conference with Brown.

Brown also said Britain and France will push for an immediate cease-fire in Darfur and are prepared to provide “substantial” economic aid “as soon as a cease-fire makes it possible.”

“Unless action is taken, we will be prepared to consider as individual countries a toughening up of sanctions” against the Sudanese regime, he also warned.

Brown said that he and Sarkozy will send their foreign ministers to New York to push for U.N. action “with the greatest speed.”

“We hope that that resolution will pass quickly,” he said. “Once the United Nations resolution is passed, we are prepared to go together to Darfur to make sure that the peace process is moving forward,” Brown said.

He called the situation in the western Sudanese region a “great humanitarian disaster.”

A service of the Associated Press(AP)