US Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Thursday he would travel to Sudan next week during UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's visit there to press Khartoum to end the crisis in the strife-torn western region of Darfur by disarming pro-government militias and easing humanitarian access.
Powell, who will visit the capital and Darfur itself, said his message would be "let the aid flow freely, let the humanitarian workers in, use government forces and political influence to end the attacks and act in a very responsible way to help these people as fast as we can.
"The situation is so dire that if we were able to do everything we wanted to do tomorrow, there would still be a large loss of life because of the deprivations that people are under now," he said.
"This is a catastrophe and it is incumbent on the international community to come together solidly to do everything we can to bring it to an end to bring relief to these desperate people."
Powell will visit Sudan after accompanying President George W. Bush to a NATO summit in Istanbul and while en route to a southeast Asian security meeting in Jakarta, spokesman Richard Boucher said.
Sudan is currently designated a "state sponsor of terrorism" by Washington, and Powell said Bush had personally signed off on the trip. He will be the highest-level US official to visit Sudan since 1978, when former secretary of state Cyrus Vance made a brief stop there.
Powell's visit Tuesday and Wednesday will boost pressure on Sudan to rein in the pro-government Arab militias accused of conducting an ethnic cleansing campaign in Darfur. At least 10,000 people have been killed and up to a million displaced in Darfur since African rebels rose up in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of discrimination and neglect.
The government's response was to give the militias free rein to conduct a scorched-earth campaign against the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement.
The UN has called Darfur the world's worst current humanitarian crisis and leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, the US and EU have all demanded that Khartoum halt the killing.
Shortly after Powell's trip was announced, the US ambassador at-large for war crimes, Pierre Prosper, told lawmakers that evidence suggested that genocide may be taking place in Darfur but that Washington had not yet made a legal determination on the issue.
"I can tell you that we see indicators of genocide and there is evidence that points in that direction," Prosper said in testimony before the House International Relations Committee.
Such a determination, which would require action under international conventions, is under review.
The US Senate later voted to appropriate US$95 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to Darfur. The funding was approved as an amendment to a military appropriations bill, and will be available immediately once Bush signs the bill into law.
Washington is considering the imposition of sanctions on Sudanese officials and others affiliated with the militias and Prosper identified seven individuals by name whom he said should "be investigated and brought to justice."
Under heavy pressure, Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir announced last weekend that his Islamic government had ordered the army to disarm the militias, stabilize the region and prevent fighting from spilling over into neighboring Chad.
But that order has been greeted skeptically in Washington, and in an interview with an Egyptian newspaper published Wednesday, Beshir accused unnamed foreigners Beshirof trying to take advantage of the crisis to intervene in his nation's affairs and denied his government was blocking aid.
"We've seen little follow-through on President Beshir's declaration concerning stability in Darfur," Boucher said.
He said at least 301 villages had been attacked and destroyed by the militias and that another 76 had been damaged. He also said they had burned crops, killed or stolen cattle and destroyed irrigation systems.
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