UNITED NATIONS, May 2 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council will tour Africa early next month to try to better understand and address some of the continent's crises, including Darfur and Somalia, British Ambassador John Sawers said on Friday.

Sawers, the current council president, and South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo will lead the mission, which will leave New York on May 31 and spend the first 10 days of June in Africa.

The party, grouping representatives of the 15 nations on the council, will visit Kenya, where it will consider the Somali problem, Sudan -- including the semi-independent south and the violence-torn western region of Darfur -- Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ivory Coast, Sawers said.

The United Nations has peacekeeping missions in all those countries except Kenya and is contemplating whether to boost the U.N. presence in Somalia, where the Ethiopian-backed government is struggling against Islamist insurgents.

Asked at a news conference whether the group would visit Somalia itself, Sawers said, "The plan at the moment is not to go to Somalia." But he added: "We're going to the borders of Somalia and we will determine exactly what our itinerary is nearer the time, based on security conditions."

In Chad, the United Nations is deploying police to accompany a European Union peacekeeping force in the east, where some half a million Sudanese refugees and displaced Chadians are encamped.

Congo and Ivory Coast are both seeking to recover from civil wars. Congo, where violence persists in the east, hosts the world's largest U.N. peace force, some 17,000-strong. Ivory Coast has scheduled a presidential election for Nov. 30. (Reporting by Patrick Worsnip, editing by Todd Eastham)

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