Deploy now in Darfur.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Two months have passed since a peace agreement was signed by the Sudanese government and one of the three rebel groups it is fighting in Darfur. Yet the genocide grinds on, and there is no agreement on the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers needed to save Darfur's two million refugees from slaughter, starvation and disease.

On Sunday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and unsuccessfully urged him to accept U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Al-Bashir categorically rejected Annan's plea, arguing that allowing U.N. forces into Sudan would be the same as allowing foreign forces to occupy his country.

Given Africa's troubled colonial history, Bashir's resistance might be understandable if he weren't the leader of a murderous regime responsible for the deaths of up to 300,000 non-Arab Darfuris since 2003. Another 2 million have been driven from their homes, tortured, harassed and raped by the government-supported Arab militias known as janjaweed.

Bashir's refusal is undermined by his earlier willingness to accept deployment of 10,000 U.N. troops in Sudan's south as part of an earlier peace accord. Bashir also went along with the African Union sending in 7,000 troops into Darfur last year. His genocidal agenda also was revealed by his recent suspension of international aid efforts in Darfur, his decision to send the marauding janjaweed into Chad and his failure to meet the peace accord's deadline for disarming militias.

The U.N. must stand up to Bashir's threat that U.N. forces will find their "graveyard" in the province and should move up its timetable for deployment.

Last week, the head of the U.N. mission in Sudan, Jan Pronk, warned that the Darfur peace agreement is in growing danger of collapse as time passes and U.N. troops are not deployed. Pronk noted that not one of the peace accord's deadlines has been met and said the humanitarian situation in Darfur is worsening, with aid workers being cut off from the ethnic African refugees who rely on them for their survival.

It will be difficult for the Security Council to move forward with the necessary speed and decisiveness. Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden recently called on all Muslims to fight in Sudan if U.N. troops step foot in Darfur. Meanwhile, China has repeatedly sided with Sudan in order to protect its oil exports from the northeast African nation, and Arab nations have been chillingly silent about the murder of Muslim civilians in Darfur.

But the council must now press ahead with deployment. The nations of the world, especially NATO member-states, must expedite their contributions of troops, equipment and money.

Those who hesitate should remember their legal and moral obligation to act under the 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - and what happened in Rwanda 12 years ago when the world shrugged at genocide.

For more than two years, the nations of the world have struggled to find a solution in Darfur. The time has come for action. There must be no more delay.