WASHINGTON, June 19: The United States threatened on Friday to impose sanctions on Sudanese officials as a way of intensifying pressure on the Khartoum government to help ease a humanitarian crisis in the western region of Darfur.

The State Department is studying if government-backed militias are responsible for genocide in the oil-rich African nation and if it can impose sanctions on individual officials, spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.

The United States already has a range of sanctions against the African nation but has not targeted individuals before to try to make the government stop militia attacks and allow aid to reach refugees in the crisis.

"It's an idea under active consideration. We are reviewing available information to determine which specific individuals could be designated as responsible," Ereli said.

The Sudanese government has bent little under pressure from the sanctions and from repeated statements condemning it for supporting what the United States has called "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur.

In one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk because rains and government aid restrictions could stop sufficient relief reaching those affected by the conflict.

Fighting in Darfur has driven more than 1 million people from their homes to other parts of Sudan and forced more than 150,000 to flee to neighbouring Chad. About 2 million in the region need outside aid, according to UN figures.-Reuters