Sudan rejects U.S. claims of genocide

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Sudan's foreign minister, insisting his government is doing all it can to end the conflict in the country's western Darfur region, rejected a U.S. Congressional declaration that the bloodletting amounts to genocide.\nForeign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said Sudan agrees with the African Union, which has refrained from calling the atrocities genocide, a crime punishable under a 1948 U.N. convention.\n"Congress is always biased," Mustafa Osman Ismail said, speaking at the Brussels headquarters for the European Union. "I would rather say what the Africans who are concerned with this case (are saying)."\n"We are cooperating with the U.N.," he added.\nU.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said last month he wasn't ready to describe the situation in Darfur "as genocide or ethnic cleansing," but he did call it "a tragic humanitarian situation" and raised the possibility of international intervention.\nArab militias have killed up to 30,000 people in Darfur, most of them black Africans, and driven over 1 million from their homes in the 15-month conflict.\nSaturday, Australia's defense minister said that U.N. officials had approached his country about contributing troops to a U.N. mission to Darfur.\n"We are contemplating whether to make a contribution," Defense Minister Robert Hill said. "It would be relatively modest and we haven't made a final decision. He said the troops of interest to the United Nations included medics and engineers.\nU.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said it was up to the signatories of the genocide convention to decide if action should be taken on Sudan and whether to raise the issue with the U.N. Security Council or the International Criminal Court.\n"Those are the options open, and we're just waiting to see whether any member state decides to take one of those options," he said Friday in New York.\nCongress approved resolutions late Thursday declaring that atrocities unfolding in Darfur are genocide, and urged the Bush administration to do the same.\nPassed unanimously in the House and Senate, the measures urged President Bush to call the situation in Sudan "by its rightful name" and urged his administration to work with the international community to stop it.\nHuman rights groups expressed hope that the actions would lead to international action to stop the slaughter.\n"There have clearly been massive atrocities committed against civilians, but genocide requires a particular intent that's not easy to prove," said Leslie Lefkow, an Amsterdam-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.\nThe New York-based rights group has called the violence "ethnic cleansing" but not "genocide."\n"Whatever you call it ... this is just an appalling human rights situation that needs to be addressed," Lefkow said. "The international community should be responding to it and putting the absolute maximum pressure to see some improvement."\nMeeting with Ismail late Friday, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana took the Sudanese foreign minister to task for not acting quick enough on U.N. demands to disarm the Arab militias, EU officials said. The United States, the European Union and humanitarian groups accuse the Sudanese government of backing the Janjaweed militias -- a claim Sudan denies.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that more reports from the region were needed before a determination could be made on whether the killings amount to genocide. But he called the situation a "humanitarian catastrophe" and urged Sudan to act quickly to disarm the Arab militias.\nEarlier this month the African Union pressed Sudan to "neutralize" the Arab militiamen but said they did not consider the atrocities to be genocide.\nAmnesty International also has not used the term "genocide" but welcomed the Congressional initiative as a way to raise awareness and persuade other governments, especially those in Africa, to put more pressure on the Sudanese government.\n"There is a potential for it to be genocide, but to date we don't have enough access or information to confirm that," Amnesty spokesman Adotei Akwei said.