Rice says nations must do more for Darfur

PARIS -- The world has fallen down on the job of ending the violence in Sudan's Darfur region, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday as she welcomed the fresh energy that France's new conservative-led government has put to the cause.

She called the four-year-old conflict "one of the true humanitarian disasters that we face in international politics and one the international community has simply got to act more quickly and more responsibly to stop."

Rice, speaking to reporters at a press conference with Bernard Kouchner, French foreign minister, is in Paris for two days of get-to-know-you meetings with the new French government and a strategy session on Darfur.

Kouchner organized today's conference to speed deployment of about 20,000 new peacekeeping troops to Darfur, the vast, arid region where an estimated 200,000 have died in fighting between African rebels and militias backed by the Arab-led Sudanese government. The conflict has driven about 2.5 million from their homes.

"I have seen firsthand the devastation and the difficult circumstances in which people live in Darfur, and I will be very frank," Rice said. "I do not think that the international community has really lived up to its responsibilities there."

Rice visited Darfur in 2005, spending an afternoon in a refugee camp. Kouchner, a doctor who cofounded the Nobel Prize-winning aid group Doctors Without Borders, has been to Darfur more frequently and more recently.

Sudan was not invited to the Paris conference, a decision that Kouchner justified yesterday.

"This is not a 'peacemaking' meeting, but on the contrary, a meeting to support the international efforts that have been deployed," he said.

Kouchner and Rice noted that China will attend the session. China has trade and energy ties to Sudan and has been accused of running interference for the government in Khartoum.

Before arriving yesterday, Rice warned Sudan's government not to renege on its recent agreement to allow a larger peacekeeping force into Darfur. The peacekeepers would come from the African Union and the United Nations.

"If in fact the Sudanese are prepared to accept the hybrid force, they need to accept it once and for all and stop the process of trying to scale it back," Rice said in a press conference aboard her plane. "It seems one step forward, two steps back with the Sudanese government."

Part of today's session on Darfur is expected to flesh out a French proposal for a small, interim peacekeeping force to protect vulnerable refugee camps in neighboring Chad, where some Darfur refugees have fled.

US officials said last week they welcome the idea, partly for what it says about French commitment to take a leading role in the conflict.

The conference is focused on arrangements for the much larger peacekeeping force for Darfur. The Sudanese government agreed to the force this month, but the details remain vague.

"The Sudanese government has not been easy to deal with," the US envoy for Darfur, Andrew Natsios, said in an interview with the Associated Press. He noted the delay since November in getting an agreement on the new troop complement.