Bush resists calls to label

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration resisted calls yesterday to declare Arab militia attacks on African villagers in Sudan genocide, a label that would pressure the United States to do more to stop the violence.

Congress passed a resolution late Thursday declaring killings, rape, and pillage by horseback militia in Sudan's Darfur region genocide and urging President Bush to seek a UN force to protect villagers.

But despite weeks of investigating and a trip to the area by Secretary of State Colin Powell last month, the Bush administration said it still did not have proof of genocide in a conflict that the United Nations says has already killed tens of thousands of people.

In 15 months of fighting, Arab nomads, known as the Janjaweed, have driven non-Arab farmers from their villages in an extension of a long conflict over farmland and grazing, according to the United States, the United Nations, and human rights groups.

But when asked whether the killings could be called genocide now, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said attention on Darfur should be on helping victims rather than putting a label on the violence.

"That's where the focus has to be placed. We'll certainly take the views of the Congress into account as we proceed in this work," he said.

Bush reiterated yesterday the United States has asked the Sudan government to stop the violence.

In a speech to the Urban League in Detroit, he said: "We made our position very clear to the Sudanese government: They must stop Janjaweed violence. They must provide access for humanitarian relief to the people who suffer."

But Eric Reeves, who has monitored and written about the Darfur crisis, criticized the US response as slow and applauded Thursday's congressional declaration. He hoped it would prompt the Bush administration to say the violence is genocide and press for the 10,000 troops he estimates are needed in the crisis.

"This is Rwanda in slow motion," said Reeves, a professor of English language and literature at Smith College in Massachusetts. "It's the same mistakes, it's just that this time there is more time to make the mistakes."

In 1994, Hutus killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days in Rwanda.

Under the UN genocide convention, the United States is obliged to try to prevent such violence but it does not stipulate what should be done, leaving it for signatories to take "appropriate" action.

Washington has led international efforts to pressure Sudan to curb the militia but with troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has stopped short of pushing for a force in Sudan.

In Khartoum, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, president of Sudan, criticized the international community. "The international concern over Darfur is actually a targeting of the Islamic state in Sudan," he said yesterday, not commenting directly on the congressional resolution.

Material from Dow Jones News Service was included in this report.