The US Congress has passed a resolution declaring genocide in the western region of Darfur.
The resolution was approved yesterday, and its supporters hope it will help mobilise the international community to protect Africans in Darfur from Arab militias.
But the accusation of genocide is highly controversial and has not been formally adopted by the US administration, the United Nations, Darfuri rebel,s or most of the humanitarian organisations working in the remote region.
The Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed, have been driving non-Arab villagers off their land in Darfur in an extension of a long conflict over farmland and grazing. The conflict has displaced more than one million people in the region.
Mr Ibrahim Ahmed, a Sudanese political analyst, said it was clear that there was no legal basis for saying genocide was under way in Darfur, otherwise the US administration's lawyers would have adopted the term.
"But what is equally obvious is that the American public thinks that it is genocide and therefore getting Congress to rule on this was a politically expedient way of mollifying public opinion while circumnavigating the legalities," he added.
The Bush administration has drafted a UN resolution threatening sanctions if the Sudanese government does not disarm the Janjaweed and remove all restrictions on access to Darfur.
The Sudanese government says it is trying to comply but it will take time to implement its plans.
"We don't pretend that the situation has come back to normal," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told the French daily Le Mondein an interview published today.
"There exists a real problem which has to be resolved on a humanitarian, political and security level and we intend to do that. . . . But one has to understand that we are applying a plan that is working in stages," he added.
Displaced Darfuris in Khartoum took some comfort from the congressional resolution but said they had some doubts about the the international community's commitment to intervene.
"We were told that the United Nations would make us safe, but we waited so long in Darfur and no one came to make us safe. I'm not sure if we will be safe. Can America sleep with us in our houses?" said an 18-year-old woman who said she was abducted by militiamen in Darfur but escaped.