SUDAN - Incoming Disaster.

Relief workers and UN officials warn that, without tough and immediate actions, as many as a million people could die before the end of the year from Sudanese government-sponsored attacks and the starvation and disease that inevitably follow. To save these lives, they say, as many countries as possible must put direct pressure Khartoum's leaders by freezing their foreign assets and banning their arms purchases until they keep their promises to disband the Janjaweed.

They have repeatedly said that, allowing relief workers and military observers in while the attacks continue is not enough. The Sudanese government has been urged repeatedly that it must stop supporting the Janjaweed, disarm its fighters and fulfill its duty to protect the non-Arab people of Darfur.

Khartoum leaders, however, are still acting on the assumption that ending the long and deadly civil war in the south is enough to allow them to reap an economic bonanza from rapidly rising oil production in the country.

The US has warned that there can be no peace in Sudan without an end to the killing in Darfur. One recent US press editorial said: "Any illusion that Sudan's leaders are now prepared to act responsibly without being compelled to do so should have been dispelled by their cynical behavior during the Powell and [UN Secretary-General Kofi] Annan visits" [in early July]. It said whip-flailing government soldiers "drove Darfur residents away from Powell as he visited a carefully selected model refugee camp".

University students seeking to deliver a petition on Darfur to UN Annan in Khartoum were shot and wounded by security forces. Sudanese authorities also forcibly cleared out a Darfur refugee camp that Annan planned to visit.