US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says there has been progress in Darfur but the world will not accept mere promises from Sudan's new government to halt the violence.
Ms Rice said a new unified government in Khartoum has a chance to help the country recover from what she reaffirmed was genocide in ravaged Darfur.
"The US believes that by our accounts it was and is genocide," Ms Rice said yesterday after attending a trade conference in Dakar, Senegal.
"That has not changed," she said, since her predecessor, Colin Powell, used the same term a year ago.
Ms Rice is travelling to Darfur, a vast province in western Sudan, today after meetings that will include Sudanese President Omar el-Bashir. The United States has blamed his government for recruiting and equipping Arab militiamen to massacre black African villagers, destroy homes and cause tens of thousands of deaths from hunger and disease in the region.
Ms Rice planned to visit a Darfur refugee camp that houses more than 70,000 people. She was to meet privately today with female refugees to discuss their claims that they face violence and rape inside and outside the camp.
The nature of the Darfur crisis has changed from what US Agency for International Development administrator Andrew Natsios called the "ethnic cleansing" of 2003 and 2004.
Now, the daily violence has largely stopped and the main problems involve the fate of refugees and how to safely return them to their villages.
AP