"International leaders should be ready to meet soon to consider next steps," a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters, adding that no agenda or date had yet been set for such a meeting. He did not elaborate on what "next steps" meant but Blair has suggested a carrot and stick approach that included incentives for Sudan if it allows U.N. troops into Darfur.
The United States and Denmark host a meeting on Darfur in New York on Friday as the government in Khartoum continues to refuse any U.N force into its western region to stop fighting that has killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. (...)
U.N. human rights monitors on Friday accused Sudan's army of dropping bombs on villages in North Darfur, killing and injuring civilians, and driving hundreds of people from their homes. They also reported continuing rapes and sexual violence against women by military or militia known as Janjaweed around camps for the displaced in South Darfur.

generate one million postcards for delivery to President Bush, who recently pledged to push for additional UN and NATO help to protect the people of Darfur. We applaud the President's leadership, but the work is far from done. We are urging President Bush to take steps necessary to end the genocide and build a lasting peace.

Currently, Hollywood celebrities, college students, religious leaders and experts champion the plight of the Darfur victims. But despite the attention, the United Nations has been unable to raise enough money to support its operations in Sudan. On Friday, the U.N. World Food Program announced that it had received only 32 percent of its appeal for $746 million for its operations in Sudan, and that food rations to the camps would be cut in half.

They wore skullcaps, turbans, headscarves, yarmulkes, baseball hats and bandanas. There were pastors, rabbis, imams, youths from churches and youths from synagogues. They cried out phrases in Arabic and held signs in Hebrew. But on this day, they said, they didn't come out as Jews or Muslims, Christians or Sikhs, Republicans or Democrats. They came out as one, they said, to demand that the Bush administration place additional sanctions on Sudan and push harder for a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent to Darfur.
By Washington standards, where protests often draw more than 100,000 people, yesterday's rally -- estimated by organizers at between 10,000 and 15,000 -- was not huge. Yet the Rally to Stop Genocide appeared to be distinctive for being one of the more diverse rallies the capital has seen in years.

The rally comes as the humanitarian situation is worsening, the United Nations and human rights groups say. At least 200,000 have died and 2.5 million, most of them non-Arabs, have fled to refugee camps inside Darfur or to neighboring Chad, including 60,000 in the last month, according to the United Nations. U.S. and international diplomatic and political efforts have so far failed to stop the violence.
President Bush, who met with Darfur advocates at the White House on Friday, praised the protesters and said the United States is serious about solving the problem. But protesters said he needs to do more. The urgency, as well as a sense of the past, was not lost on many of the speakers yesterday. The speakers' podium was thick with the sweep of history, as survivors of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide and the ethnic conflict in Bosnia drew parallels to Darfur. As the rally's first speaker, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel drew a direct comparison to his own suffering in Nazi concentration camps.

(UDPATE 12/06/2005 at the end)
 

The Wall Street Journal argues today that Europe cares about human rights only when it can criticize the United States. The Review & Outlook piece describes Europe's "moral outrage" over alleged CIA prisons and secret flights of terror suspects as "deafening," and opines:

If Europe were seriously concerned about morality. Europe would no longer be Iran's No. 1 trading partner, and its companies wouldn't be able to attend trade fairs in Sudan anymore. Unlike American companies--recently defamed in Germany as "(blood) suckers" and "locusts" by the former government--European firms are quite busy in Sudan. The chamber of commerce and industry in Stuttgart has enthused over what great opportunities Sudan's oil resources offer to German companies. Lest people think they are doing something morally reprehensible, the salesmen from Stuttgart prefer to describe the massacres of black Africans in Darfur as "political disturbances." The German economics ministry, which sponsored the German pavilion at last February's trade fair in Sudan, will also support next February's event, the chamber of commerce assures its members.