UNITED NATIONS: The humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region in Sudan has reached deadly proportions: thousands killed, one million people displaced, over 150,000 refugees fleeing into neighbouring Chad and entire villages wiped out by marauding militia groups.
Still, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and UN Secretary- General Kofi Annan have refused to describe the killings by the Janjaweed militia as "genocide". Salih Booker, executive director of the Washington-based Africa Action, said that 20,000 people in and outside the United States have signed a petition urging Powell to declare that "genocide" is taking place in Darfur.
"We want an immediate US-led intervention to stop the killings," Booker said. The petition is to be presented to Powell later this week on his return from Sudan, where he met on Tuesday with Sudanese President Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Bashir.
"The Khartoum government is clearly responsible for the genocide taking place in Darfur, and yet it continues to deny its role and to obstruct humanitarian access to the region," Booker added.
"Rather than travelling half-way around the world to hold talks with this murderous regime, Powell could achieve much more by simply uttering one word - genocide," he said.
During his visit to Khartoum on Tuesday, Powell told reporters that US officials were still studying the humanitarian situation in Sudan. "What we are seeing is a disaster, a catastrophe, and we can find the right label for it later. We have to deal with it now," he said.
Lavinia Limon, executive director of the US Committee for Refugees, said that "President (George W.) Bush must call this crime by its rightful name - 'genocide' - and act immediately to stop it, and not merely request but force Khartoum to permit unfettered humanitarian access."
The Sudanese government, implicitly accused of supporting the Janjaweed militia, has denied any involvement in the mass killings. Asked if the killings could be characterized as "genocide", Annan told reporters last week: "Based on the reports that I have received, I can't at this stage call it genocide."
"There are massive violations of international humanitarian law," Annan admitted, "but I am not ready to describe it as genocide or ethnic cleansing." Asked if he accepts the denials by the Sudanese government, he said: "I don't have specific evidence, but from all accounts they can do something about the Janjaweed."
Annan is also due to meet with Sudanese officials in Khartoum later this week to put pressure on the government to allow humanitarian workers free access to Darfur. Africa Action has rejected Powell's and Annan's visit to Sudan as "dangerously naove".
After a 13-day tour of Sudan in early June, a UN human rights expert Asma Jahangir told reporters that the number of black Africans killed by Arab Janjaweed militias is "bound to be staggering".
There is no doubt that Khartoum had sponsored, armed or recruited the so-called Janjaweed militias, said Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.
She said the militias - who, like their targets, are predominantly Muslim - often wear the uniforms of government soldiers and use government vehicles. The United States has been accused of dragging its feet over Darfur primarily because it doesn't want to undermine a US- brokered power-sharing agreement signed last month between the Sudanese government and the Sudan's People's Liberation Army (SPLA) in southern Sudan.
The agreement is being viewed as a prelude to a peace pact to end a 21-year-old civil war in the southern part of the country. "Unless we resolve the Darfur situation and do it correctly, all of that (in southern Sudan) is put at risk," Powell said on Tuesday.
Bill Fletcher, Jr., President of TransAfrica Forum, told IPS that the international community is always slow to respond to internal situations in any country. More often than not there is a fear that an intervention will be used against them in the future, he said. -Dawn/The Inter Press News Service.