But the designation appeared to put more pressure on the U.S. to act than on Sudan. The Security Council has declined to place sanctions on Sudan, instead offering rewards for cementing a peace agreement in a separate conflict between the north and south that they hope would shore up a settlement in Darfur.
That peace agreement was signed this month, but the move has yet to halt the conflict in Darfur. A rise in violence has displaced thousands of civilians and obstructed access for aid workers. Cease-fire monitors from the African Union reported an aerial bombing by government planes in South Darfur as recently as Wednesday.
With the fighting continuing despite international censure, diplomats and human rights groups are seeking an effective deterrent. For many European and African countries, the answer seems to be prosecutions by the International Criminal Court.
"This is a watershed moment for the ICC," Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said. "It is an opportunity for the court to show what it was made for."
But the Bush administration is torn between its desire to bring killers in Khartoum to justice and its opposition to the ICC, Roth said. Washington is afraid that the court will be used for politicized prosecutions of Americans. As an alternative, the U.S. has proposed that the U.N. and the African Union establish a court in Arusha, Tanzania, the headquarters of the Rwanda tribunal, for the prosecution of Darfur's war crimes, U.S. officials said.
Russia and China, which have been the main opponents of sanctions on Sudan, have voiced tentative support for sending the case to the ICC.
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said his country would help Sudan progress toward peace. Asked whether that included a referral to the ICC, he said China would defer to the African Union's decision. "They know what is best for Sudan better than we do," he said.
Sudan last week completed its own inquiry on allegations of genocide and human rights abuse, with results that on the surface, are similar to the U.N. commission's.
The Sudanese inquiry concluded that massive human rights violations by the military, rebel groups and warring tribes occurred, but that the violence did not constitute genocide. The report draws a comparison with genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, and says that unlike those mass exterminations, there was no state policy with the goal of eradicating a particular group. They found evidence that government forces had bombed areas hosting armed opposition, and had killed civilians.
The committee also recommended a redistribution of land and water rights in Darfur to balance the needs of farmers and nomad grazers that have been at the root of tribal clashes.
The decision on whether or how to prosecute was left to a legal committee, which has not yet reached a conclusion, the report said. But Ahmed, the ambassador in Washington, said that if the international community acknowledged that rebels also had committed war crimes, not just the government and militias, then it would be "very logical" to send all the cases to the ICC. "Justice should apply to all people," Ahmed said.
