Annan urges action on Sudan’s Darfur at Holocaust remembrance-WP

NEW YORK, Jan 25, 2005 (Dow Jones) — Secretary General Kofi Annan urged key U.N. members to prosecute war criminals in Darfur, Sudan , as the U.N. General Assembly on held its first commemoration of the liberation of Nazi death camps at the end of World War II, The Washington Post reports in its Tuesday edition.

Annan chided the organization’s members for repeatedly failing to heed the lessons of the Holocaust in recent decades, and standing by in the face of mass murder in Cambodia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. “Since the Holocaust, the world has, to its shame, failed more than once to prevent or halt genocide,” he said, according to the Post.

Annan didn’t provide a detailed plan to halt the killing in Darfur, the Post said. Instead, he urged Security Council members to ensure that “the perpetrators are held accountable” for their crimes.

Annan said that a U.N. commission of inquiry will report to him Tuesday that “gross violations” of international humanitarian law and human rights have occurred in Darfur. Sudanese-backed Arab militia have displaced nearly 2 million black African villagers and killed tens of thousands more there, the Post reported.