UNITED NATIONS – As Sudan’s president accused America of arming rebels in his country, his foreign minister was on a United Nations charm offensive, where he was received cordially by the Security Council.

In an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram, President Hassan al-Bashir accused Washington of training and arming rebels in the Western Sudanese region of Darfur, where Khartoum-backed militias have conducted what Secretary of State Powell has termed genocide.

“Who else than the United States is behind this,” Mr. Bashir told Al Ahram, according to a Reuters translation, referring to the anti-government rebellion. “They took rebels to Eritrea, and set up training camps for them, spent money on them, armed them and gave them Thuraya mobiles to speak between anywhere in the world.”

The American U.N. ambassador, John Danforth, who previously served as the Bush administration’s peace envoy to Sudan, had a two-word answer for the accusation. “That’s baloney,” he told reporters.

Sudan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Osman Ismail, told The New York Sun that he did not know the “context” of Mr. Bashir’s accusations. He spoke to reporters after a meeting with the Security Council, which was described by participants as “cordial.”

“The government of Sudan has a better appreciation of what they need to do, we have some idea of what they think they have done,” said the British ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, after the long closed-door session. There is a “big gap” he added.

Earlier, the U.N.’s top human rights official, who had just returned from Sudan, painted to the council a stark picture of conditions in the refugee camps along the border with Chad. The High Commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour, said that more than anything, the effect of the presence of the police force sent by Sudan, which according to some camp residents included the same militia members that in the past have massacred them, was to intimidate them from going home.

“I don’t see anywhere now conditions that are conducive for safe and voluntary return,” Ms. Arbour said. She added that the African Union force of 150 monitors, with 300 troops to protect them, should receive “a very large increase” and a significant mandate change that would include protection of civilians in the camps.

In an about-face, Mr. Ismail said that Sudan, which in the past has opposed any change in the mandate of the A.U. force, has negotiated such changes with the A.U. “If they want 5,000 [troops] we have no problem,” he said, adding, “They are going to have more mandate,” including the protection of civilians.

The U.N. special adviser on prevention of genocide, Juan Mendez, meanwhile, told reporters that it is not part of his “terms of reference” to define whether atrocities there added up to genocide. His mandate, he said, was to prevent genocide, not define it. “We have not turned the corner on preventing genocide from happening in the future, or even the near future,” he said.