Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice at a press conference in Dakar, Senegal. (Reuters)

Darfur (Sudan), July 21: Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice demanded and received an apology today after Sudanese security guards manhandled staff members and press accompanying her on her journey to the country.

The incidents occurred while Rice was meeting Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir. Sudanese officials shoved US journalists away from the Bashir meeting, grabbed a tape from a reporter and slammed the wooden doors to his palace in their faces.

Some US officials were also blocked for several minutes before the Sudanese agreed to allow Rice and aides in. The media was later allowed to briefly witness the talks.

At one point, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell attempted to ask a question about the killing of innocent civilians in Sudan and was physically pulled away and told there were no questions allowed.

Angered US reporters responded that the press corps with Rice were a “free press,” but were told by a Bashir aide that its “not a free press here.”

Jim Wilkinson, a senior adviser to Rice, yelled: “Stop touching our press.”

Upon rejoining the press on the plane, Rice expressed anger. “They have no right to manhandle my staff or the press,” she said. “It makes me very angry to be sitting there with the President when this kind of thing happens.”

US state department spokesman Sean McCormack said foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail had phoned Rice while she was on a plane to Darfur in western Sudan to say sorry. “He apologised for the treatment of our delegation and the press corps,” McCormack told journalists travelling with Rice.

The session at the President’s residence capped a morning of diplomacy in the Sudanese capital before a scheduled visit to the Darfur area, where the US blames Bashir’s government for recruiting and equipping rebel militiamen to massacre rural villagers and burn their homes.

He denies government involvement, but the US and international organisations say his military sent helicopter gunships to bomb small villages before rebels swept in with horses, guns and knives.

A senior official accompanying Rice said she had pressed Bashir on Darfur, saying it remained a major obstacle to improved US-Sudan relations.

Rice told Sudan’s President his government had a “credibility problem” on the issue of Darfur and she wanted to see “actions not words”.

She told Bashir to stop violence, especially against women, in the remote western region of his country. “I said to the Sudanese government that they had a credibility problem with the international community ? I have said: ‘Actions not words’”, Rice said in a round of interviews with journalists at a Darfur refugee camp.