United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has thrown his weight behind a US-drafted resolution on Sudan's Darfur region, saying the Security Council should adopt it immediately to stop atrocities.
"It is urgent to act now. Civilians are still being attacked and fleeing their villages as we speak," Annan told reporters on Thursday of the resolution that threatens to consider oil sanctions against Sudan if it does not stop the abuse.
US Ambassador John Danforth said he expected to call a vote for Saturday afternoon in the 15-member council. Diplomats said they expected about 11 votes in favour of the resolution and were waiting for China to come to a decision. Russia, Pakistan and Algeria also had some reservations.
China's UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, who earlier in the week threatened a veto, told reporters he still had difficulties with the text and was waiting for instructions from Beijing. But diplomats said Annan's appeal probably had an impact on China.
"I think that it was a very important statement by the secretary-general," Danforth told reporters after another round of council talks.
The draft resolution is the second in the Security Council this summer aimed at stopping the violence, which the United Nations says has left an estimated 50,000 Africans dead and has forced 1.2 million people to flee their homes. Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, are accused of murder and rape and were often backed by the Sudanese military.
Danforth submitted numerous revisions on the resolution on Thursday, including deleting a demand Sudan cease all military flights over Darfur.
But the main points of the text remain: A call for the African Union to field a large monitoring force in Darfur and a threat to consider sanctions if Sudan does not cooperate with the monitors and stop the marauding militia.
The resolution also asks Annan to create an international commission to determine human rights violations and whether genocide has occurred in Darfur as US Secretary of State Colin Powell maintained last week.
"If this resolution is adopted I shall do so with all speed," Annan said, adding he was already making some preliminary preparations. "But I want to make it clear that, no matter how the crimes that are being committed against civilians in Darfur are characterised or legally defined, it is urgent to take action now."
He said he was sending Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights, and Juan Mendes, a special adviser on the prevention of genocide, to visit Darfur and see what can be done to stop abuses.
They will arrive in Khartoum on Sunday but will not make a judgment on whether genocide has occurred, he said.
The draft resolution, says the council "shall consider" imposing sanctions, including against Sudan's oil industry, if Khartoum does not reign in the Janjaweed or cooperate with an expanded African Union monitoring mission.
Annan also said UN members had to support an expanded monitoring mission of the African Union, which may send 3,000 troops and observers to Darfur to investigate abuse and fill in a $250 million shortfall in humanitarian aid.
Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of skirmishes between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over land and water in the arid area as large as France.
The government turned to militia, drawn chiefly from the nomadic Arab population, to help suppress the rebels but the Janjaweed escalated the battle to civilians.