UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned today a Rwanda-style genocide may be in the making in Sudan and said international military force could be needed.
Mr Annan issued his warning in a speech in Geneva on the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide in which about 800,000 died. He left no doubt he feared something similar might be under way in west Sudan, where UN officials say "ethnic cleansing" is carried out.
"The international community cannot stand idle," declared Mr Annan, who has himself acknowledged more should have been done to halt the orgy of killing in Rwanda in 1994. "The risk of genocide remains frighteningly real."
Mr Annan said humanitarian workers and human rights experts needed to be given full access to Darfur, a western region in Africa's biggest country, to administer aid to hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes, many into neighbouring Chad.
"They need to get to the victims," Mr Annan said in his speech to the UN Human Rights Commission. "If that is denied, the international community must be prepared to take swift and appropriate action. By action in such situations, I mean a continuum of steps which may include military action."
Sudan immediately rejected any outside military help but welcomed offers of aid for the region, where the United Nations is warning of a humanitarian crisis caused by a conflict it says has affected one million people.
Two rebel groups accuse the Khartoum government of arming Arab militias to loot and burn African villages in Darfur and rebels were quick to urge outside military help.
A separate civil war has raged in the south of Sudan for two decades, pitting the region's mainly Christian and animist peoples against the largely Muslim government in Khartoum. Up to two million people are believed to have died.