Hope for Darfur.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush is right to characterize the proposed peace accord in the Darfur region of Sudan as merely "the beginnings of hope."

Yet even the faintest glimmer of hope represents radical and welcome change in Darfur, where Sudanese leaders for three years have dispatched janjaweed Arab militias into villages to "cleanse" the countryside of its black populations. So far, as many as 450,000 ethnic Africans have died and another 2 million have been driven from their homes.

Since the conflict began in February 2003, seven rounds of peace talks have yielded only broken promises and bloody recriminations. Against long odds, round eight concluded last Friday with the unexpected signing of a peace accord by the government and the largest of the three rebel groups.

Major obstacles abound: The two remaining rebel factions must be persuaded to sign on to the deal. The unstable and untrustworthy regime in Khartoum must follow through on its promises to demobilize its janjaweed death squads, to fold thousands of rebel fighters into the Sudanese army, and to provide Darfur greater political representation. Both sides must also honor an agreement to create protective buffer zones around refugee camps and to allow humanitarian assistance to reach the desperate, starving civilians inside.

Sudan is a graveyard of broken peace accords. There must be no slackening of international attention and pressure if there is to be any hope of last week's agreement ending the carnage in Darfur.

Even though it has signed the peace agreement, Sudan's government clearly retains the upper hand. With the exception of scattered rebel resistance, the people of Darfur remain unarmed and vulnerable to ground attacks by the janjaweed and air attacks by government helicopters. Only intense and unrelenting diplomatic and military pressure by both Western and African nations can prevent the government from violating the agreement and continuing the killing.

U.S. and international sanctions against Sudan must remain in place until the government drops its continued opposition to the deployment of the U.N. troops to take over peacekeeping duties from the overextended and poorly equipped African Union. Without significant numbers of U.N. troops in the vast Darfur region, there is little chance that militias will disarm, that humanitarian assistance will reach refugee camps and that civilians will eventually return to their villages.

The humanitarian situation remains bleak. Many refugees are on the brink of starvation. Some aid agencies have left the area because of the violence, and the World Food Program recently warned that it's running out of money. Congress should swiftly approve President Bush's request for an additional $225 million in emergency food aid for Darfur, and other countries should join in providing food and medical supplies.

The African Union deserves major credit for both hosting the peace talks and for maintaining the skeleton peacekeeping force that, against considerable odds, has helped protect refugees and aid workers from marauding militias. The Bush administration and its European allies also played critical roles in prodding both sides to continue negotiations.

Three years of slow-motion genocide have laid waste to Darfur and its people, and it will take more than signatures on paper to save what remains.

But at least there is now hope, however fragile, that peace will prevail and that the killing in Darfur will end.