Washington, DC — The United States is not pressuring Nigeria to pull out of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner said Monday. "There is no policy to buy more or less oil from Nigeria," he said. "The market...will sort it all out."

Nigerian Information Minister Jerry Gana was reported Wednesday to have said his country is under mounting pressure from Washington to withdraw from Opec. According to Gana, the pressure stems from a U.S. desire to reduce reliance on Middle Eastern Oil.

The subject did not come up in his recent meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, said Kansteiner, during a briefing for reporters on his recent trip to the oil-producing countries of Angola, Gabon and Nigeria. "We never discussed it. It's not for us to weigh in on that."

He did discuss getting additional oil from the region. "West Africa will probably play an increasingly important role in providing the United States with imported crude," he said. The United States currently imports about 15 percent of its oil from countries in the Gulf of Guinea. This will probably rise to about 18 to 20 percent, Kansteiner said.

On Sudan, Kansteiner said that U.S. special envoy, John Danforth would be returning to that country in August "to help promote the peace process." Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir and John Garang, leader of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement, signed an agreement 10 days ago establishing a framework for talks to end the 19-year war. On Saturday, they held their first face-to-face meeting.

Peace talks are scheduled to resume August 12.

"We hope that Danforth can, in fact, return sometime in the next month to give the talks a little momentum and to keep everyone on track," Kansteiner said.