By Michelle Nichols and Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 (Reuters) - France's Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin urged the international community on Thursday to use "shuttle diplomacy" to gain approval from Sudan and Chad to send U.N. peacekeepers to the region.

The U.N. Security Council has already approved an African Union-U.N. operation of more than 22,000 troops and police in Sudan's Darfur region, and many of the 15-member body want to send peacekeepers to Chad and the Central African Republic.

But Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has delayed the peacekeepers by imposing a variety of conditions on an interim plan to bolster the 7,000-member African Union force, now in Darfur, while Chad's President Idriss Deby rejects the possibility of U.N. troops and wants just police.

Bashir's recent letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was regarded by many diplomats as an outright rejection of U.N. proposals that Khartoum had agreed to in November. The United States and Britain, among others, want sanctions imposed on Sudan for actions in Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have died since 2003 and 2.5 million are homeless.

Ban told reporters after a lunch with Security Council ambassadors that the troop proposals, agreed earlier, "were not a matter to revisit or reinterpret." But he said he would continue a dialogue with Sudan, even though he understood the frustration among Security Council members.

On Chad, Villepin, after meeting Ban, told reporters "I spoke in the last days with President Deby. We need to answer the many questions he has about that and go ahead with such a decision."

"I think if we are all committed to get strong results, in the coming weeks we can do it," he said. "But we need to have behind this commitment some kind of a shuttle diplomacy with all of our countries acting in the same direction, creating the conditions for the unity of the international community."

France, the former colonial power in Chad, has an air force contingent of 3,000 in the landlocked African nation.

Ban has recommended a peacekeeping force of up to 11,000 soldiers and police be deployed to Chad and the Central African Republic to deal with a spillover from the conflict in Darfur.

Darfur, an area the size of France, has been beset by bloodshed since 2003 when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms accusing Khartoum of neglecting the arid region.

Pro-Khartoum militia, known as Janjaweed, then looted, raped and pillaged in countless villages. More recently, rebels have also been attacking civilians as well as fighting among themselves.

"I think if we want to be effective we have to understand that we need the agreement of the different parties and we have to act collectively in order to be able to change the situation on the ground," Villepin said.

"I think we should be committed to action through a very strict timetable," he added, without elaborating.

The United States calls the Darfur violence genocide, a term rejected by the Sudanese government and one which European governments are also reluctant to use.

AlertNet news is provided by