UNITED NATIONS – The American ambassador yesterday took to task the U.N.’s top representative in Sudan, suggesting growing frustration in Washington about the soft line the U.N. has taken toward Khartoum.

In closed-door consultations, Ambassador John Danforth told Security Council members that an official report presented on Tuesday by Secretary-General Annan, which was based on reporting by his special representative, Jan Pronk, “sends the wrong message to the government of Sudan,” two diplomats told The New York Sun.

After Mr. Pronk’s briefing to the council, Mr. Danforth came out to express his criticism of the U.N. and Mr. Pronk to reporters. Mr. Danforth was specifically irate at an attempt by Mr. Pronk to exonerate the Sudanese government from responsibility for air attacks on defenseless villagers in the Darfur region. “Any indication that the government of Sudan isn’t up to its elbows in this vicious attack on innocent civilians is just plain wrong,” he said. In his council briefing, Mr. Pronk highlighted a mid-August report by African Union observers, which “informed us that there was no evidence of attacks carried out by the government airplanes.”

Mr. Danforth countered that since then, fresh A.U. reports last week described “an attack by attack helicopters of the Government of Sudan on two villages in Darfur.” Those August 26 air attacks on the villages of Hashaba and Gallab were also publicly cited by the A.U.’s point man on Sudan, the Nigerian president, Olusegun Obosanjo.

Both Mr. Pronk and the Sudanese ambassador to the U.N., Elfatih Erwa, argued that the A.U. report has not yet been “formalized.” Mr. Pronk told the Sun that the air attacks might have been provoked by rebels.

The argument was not mentioned in his council briefing yesterday, which created the impression that the government has stopped supporting the Janjaweed, who have killed 50,000 villagers in Darfur and turned 1.5 million of them into refugees.