IRIBA, Chad, Aug. 6 -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Friday visited exhausted refugees who had fled into Chad from the Darfur region of western Sudan, where they have been under attack by an Arab militia. Frist called the crisis "one of the greatest humanitarian challenges of our time" and said the killing was "genocide."
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"The direct line between the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed and the raping, pillaging and murder is so direct that, with an order from the top, I am absolutely convinced it could stop within a week," Frist said. "If the president of Sudan says stop, he can stop it." He added that he would take his observations from his tour directly to Bush.
U.N. and U.S. officials say they have evidence that the Arab-led government in Khartoum has backed the Janjaweed militia and supplied it with weapons.
Frist said additional sanctions that would impose a travel ban on Janjaweed leaders and freeze their international bank accounts would have little practical effect and were largely symbolic. He said, however, that sending U.S. troops to the region was not yet an answer, either. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he has not ruled out a military response to the crisis if the attacks on civilians do not end.
A Sudanese army spokesman recently called the U.N. resolution "tantamount to a declaration of war," and on Wednesday 100,000 Sudanese participated in a government-backed rally in Khartoum, the capital, to protest any Western intervention.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46690-2004Aug6.html
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