Genocide

President Bush, expressing frustration that the United Nations has had a difficult time raising and deploying a sufficient peacekeeping force in Darfur, said Tuesday that the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught the world not to ignore signs of budding brutality. Bush said Rwanda would receive $12 million of the $100-million contribution the U.S. is making this year to U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Darfur.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's office lashed out Friday at the Iraqi presidential council for refusing to approve the executions of two of the three men sentenced to hang for the genocidal campaign against Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority during Saddam Hussein's rule. The public dispute highlighted the persistent rancor between Iraq's major ethnic and religious factions, which continues to paralyze the highest levels of government nearly five years after Hussein's fall.

The nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to Armenia avoided using the phrase "Armenian genocide" in her Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, but she acknowledged that Armenians had suffered mass deaths, rapes and forced exile at the hands of Turks between 1915 and 1923. Marie L.

Plagued by long delays and corruption allegations, the special court prosecuting Cambodia's former Khmer Rouge leaders on genocide charges is running short of money months before its first trial is set to start. The court, which was set up by the United Nations and Cambodia's government two years ago, needs $43.8 million to continue operating through 2009, administrators said Tuesday in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor will ask judges to issue an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan next week on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, diplomats and an official close to the case said Thursday. The prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, issued a statement Thursday announcing that he would submit evidence of crimes committed against civilians in Sudan's western region of Darfur over the last five years, though he will wait until Monday at the pretrial chamber to name names.

Sudan's diplomatic offensive against the International Criminal Court is gaining momentum in Africa, but faces stiff odds before the U.N. Security Council. The government of Sudan has been waging a high-profile political campaign since the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, last week filed charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against the country's leader.

The U.N. Security Council approved another year of peacekeeping in Sudan's Darfur region despite sharp divisions among member nations over genocide charges filed against Sudan's president. The United States supports the peacekeeping mission but abstained from the council's 14-0 vote. It objects to language in the resolution that notes that the African Union wants the council to freeze the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir. U.S. spokesman Richard Grenell said that the language sent the wrong signal to a man who the U.S. believes presided over genocide.

Thirteen years after he was indicted on charges of waging a campaign of ethnic genocide, Radovan Karadzic made his first appearance Thursday before the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, complaining that he had been "kidnapped" and vowing to serve as his own attorney. The former Bosnian Serb leader quickly signaled the tactics he could use in court by attempting to shift the discourse from his own alleged crimes to what he claimed were assassination plots and other dark conspiracies.

Armenian band: An article in Saturday's Calendar section about the Armenian Navy Band, making its U.S. debut Friday at Walt Disney Concert Hall, said "Armenians carry in their collective DNA the memory of what they consider a genocide by the Turks in the early 20th century." The statement should not have qualified the term "genocide"; historical evidence and research support the accuracy of the term. Also, the phone number for tickets was wrong. The correct number is (818) 808-8222.