Berlin calls Sudan’s Darfur crisis a genocide

BERLIN, Sept 18 (AFP) — German Defence Minister Peter Struck indicated for the first time that Berlin might contribute soldiers to a UN mission in Sudan’s Darfur region, referring to the crisis there as “genocide” in an interview published Saturday.

“We cannot sit by while genocide is going on somewhere on the continent” (of Africa), Struck sold the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung, becoming the first German minister to use the word genocide in reference to Darfur.

“The United Nations is studying the possibilitiees of action in Sudan. Therefore it would not be so stupid for we Germans to ask ourselves the question” over possible intervention, he added.

The UN Security Council was due to vote later Saturday on a US draft resolution pressing Sudan to rein in the Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, blamed for a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the ethnic black African natives of the vast western Darfur region.

The resolution also calls for an expanded presence of African Union monitors in the region and asks the United Nations to establish a commission of enquiry to determine if genocide has occurred.

At least 50,000 people are estimated to have died and some 1.4 million others have been displaced in Darfur.