The UN estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, but some analysts put the figure much higher. The death toll could surge to more than 350,000 if aid doesn't reach more than 2 million people soon, the US Agency for International Development has warned.
Fighting in Darfur has continued even as peace negotiations advanced in a separate 21-year civil war in which rebels from the mainly animist and Christian south took up arms against the predominantly Arab and Muslim north. Both sides in Darfur are Muslim.
For much of this time, international attention was focused on the Iraq war. But in April, as the world marked 10 years since the 1994 slaughter of at least 500,000 Rwandans, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that a new genocide could unfold in western Sudan.
Since then, pressure has mounted on Sudan to end the slaughter. The latest peace initiative follows a concerted diplomatic push by Annan and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who visited the region earlier this month.
Powell said on Friday that he expects to hear from US experts next week whether Sudan officials should be charged with genocide.
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