Bush's turn on genocide.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide often recall that when the killing started they comforted themselves with the belief that the nations of world, led by the United States, would come to their rescue.

But the nations never came. They stood by, eyes wide open, as a militant Hutu government systematically slaughtered nearly a million members of the Tutsi minority and Hutu moderates. The United States, under President Clinton, had full knowledge of the machete-wielding militias that were killing an average of 8,000 Rwandans daily and even had intelligence information that could have stopped the mass killings before they began. Yet Clinton did nothing and even worked to block the United Nations from sending additional peacekeeping troops.

Twelve years later, the people of Darfur are wondering when the nations of the world, led by the United States, will come to their rescue.

Up to 300,000 people already have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region in an ethnic-cleansing campaign coordinated by an Arab-dominated government against black African villagers. Over 2 million have been driven from their homes and herded into refugee camps, where an ill-equipped, underfunded and outgunned force of 7,000 African Union peacekeepers is making a futile effort to protect them from marauding militias. In recent weeks, the Darfur conflict has begun to spread into neighboring Chad, with Arab militias crossing the border in raids intended to provoke the overthrow of the Chadian government.

To his credit, President Bush has done far more to address the genocide in Sudan than his predecessor did in Rwanda. The Bush administration was the first government to recognize the slaughter in Darfur as genocide and has since led the world in providing humanitarian aid.

After months of frustrating silence, Bush said last week that he wants the United Nations to take over security responsibilities in Darfur from the African Union. He also spoke of "NATO stewardship" of the peacekeeping mission and of doubling the number of troops on the ground in Darfur.

That's a good start. Now Bush must intensify his efforts. The U.N. Security Council remains divided, with Qatar, China and Russia strongly opposed to sanctions against Sudan. Last week, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer ruled out the possibility of sending NATO troops to Darfur.

It's time for the president to do what a growing number of Americans, from human rights organizations to evangelical Christian groups, want him to do - lead the world in ending the Darfur genocide.

Bush should make clear to the United Nations that it must intercede, both with peacekeepers and a full range of military and economic sanctions, or the organization's reputation and effectiveness will be permanently damaged.

As for NATO, Bush must emphasize that its troops, as well as air cover to keep Sudanese government helicopter gunships on the ground, are essential, since assembling a U.N. peacekeeping force takes months, not weeks. If something is not done immediately to stabilize security in Darfur, then humanitarian workers will be forced to abandon the country and the militias, assisted by starvation and disease, will swiftly bring the genocide to completion.

President Bush has much more work to do on Darfur. Either he will provide the necessary leadership, or historians will someday record that Bush, like Clinton, failed to halt a genocide on his watch and once again made mockery of that familiar post-Holocaust pledge: "Never again."