Powell classifies Darfur killings as genocide

SUDAN: The US declared yesterday genocide occurred in Sudan's Darfur region and blamed the Khartoum government and Arab militias…

SUDAN: The US declared yesterday genocide occurred in Sudan's Darfur region and blamed the Khartoum government and Arab militias for violence that has driven more than one million people from their homes.

While the finding has little legal import and is unlikely to overcome Western reluctance to any international military intervention to end the western Sudan crisis, analysts said it imposed a greater moral obligation on governments to act.

It may also influence UN Security Council debate on a US draft resolution threatening sanctions on Sudan's oil sector if Khartoum fails to stop what US officials say is a campaign of rape, murder and looting against African villagers and refuses to accept a large African Union monitoring force.

"Genocide has been committed in Darfur," Secretary of State Colin Powell told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "The government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and . . . genocide may still be occurring."

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Mr Powell, who has been criticised for not doing enough to stop the crisis, said his focus was on increasing the number of African Union monitors and acknowledged there is no consensus on imposing sanctions. Sudan pumps about 320,000 barrels of oil per day and its customers include China and Pakistan, council members expected to oppose sanctions.

Mr Angelo Beda, deputy speaker of Sudan's parliament, claimed while on a visit to Kenya: "The US is acting like a bull in a china shop."

Rebels began an uprising in Darfur in February 2003 after years of low-level fighting between mainly African farmers and Arab nomads over scarce land and water. The government of Africa's largest country turned to the Janjaweed militias to help suppress the rebels.

Aid groups describe co-ordinated brutality, with attackers taking baby boys off their mothers backs and killing them, raping women in front of relatives and poisoning wells.

The UN has estimated some 1.2 million people have fled their homes and up to 50,000 people have died from direct violence, starvation or illness in what it describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

"This is genocide," said Ms Nina Bang-Jensen, director of the Coalition for International Justice non-governmental group that conducted research on Darfur for the State Department. "There is a moral and legal imperative to act." A decade after the international community failed to stop genocide in Rwanda, human rights group hope the US declaration will spur greater efforts on Sudan.

But Mr Beda and two fellow team members, touring several African capitals to press Khartoum's case on Darfur, said US pressure on Sudan's Islamist rulers would stir fresh separatist turmoil elsewhere in the country, complicate Darfur peace efforts and possibly torpedo peace moves in the south.At peace talks in Nigeria, Darfur rebels said negotiations with the Sudan government were on the verge of collapse.