UN Secretary General Kofi Annan today called on the Security Council to issue "the strongest warning" to the forces fighting in Sudan to bring an end to the civil wars there.
"I regret to report that the security situation in Darfur continued to deteriorate despite the ceasefire agreement signed earlier," Mr Annan told Security Council members, who began extraordinary meetings in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.
"Both the government and its militias as well as the rebel groups have breached these agreements."
The council was expected to hear from representatives of the African Union, the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Sudanese government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, the main southern rebel group.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Mr John Danforth, called the meeting to give members a chance to meet with experts working to end the fighting and suffering in Sudan's western Darfur region, as well as those hoping to wrap up a peace deal to end a 21-year civil war in southern Sudan.
"The strongest warning to all the parties that are causing this suffering is essential," Mr Annan said. "When crimes on such a scale are being committed, and a sovereign state appears unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens, a grave responsibility falls on the international community, and specifically on this council."
After a brief meeting with Nairobi-based aid agencies and civil groups, the council was scheduled to adopt a resolution on Sudan. A draft of the resolution promises financial and political support for any peace agreements reached to end the violence in Sudan, but members had yet to agree on whether the council should threaten to impose sanctions or take any other kind of action should any party to the conflict fail to obey a ceasefire or allow aid agencies access to civilians in need of help.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has called the violence in Darfur a genocide and in September accused four Security Council members - China, Russia, Algeria and Pakistan - of valuing their business deals in Sudan over humanitarian concerns. All four abstained from an 11-0 vote to set up a commission to investigate the genocide charges against Sudan.
Ahead of today's meeting in Nairobi, human rights groups deplored the Security Council's failure to take a harder line, insisting that an arms embargo or the explicit threat of sanctions was needed against the Sudanese government.
Amnesty International has called for the council to impose an immediate arms embargo on the Sudanese government.
Amnesty International and other groups have called for an arms embargo against Sudan, which spends most of its budget on military hardware. Sudan has known only 11 years of peace since independence from Britain in 1956.
Agencies