Stop the killing.

Byline: The Register-Guard

After weeks of dithering, the United Nations approved a watered-down resolution last Friday that threatens unspecified diplomatic and economic "actions" against Sudan if its government doesn't stop the mass slaughter of civilians by Arab militias in the country's remote western Darfur region.

But it will take much more than a flaccid U.N. resolution to stop what most international aid agencies now agree is genocide. On the same day that the Security Council approved the resolution, there were reports that government-supported "Janjaweed" militias raided the town of Suleia, where villagers were chained together and burned alive.

An estimated 1,000 people are dying every day from militia attacks and forced starvation. At least 30,000 people already have died, and more than a million more could perish if the world does not move swiftly and decisively to end the killing.

The U.N. Security Council approved the U.S.-sponsored resolution after the United States dropped language directly threatening sanctions, a move aimed to avoid triggering a veto by permanent members Russia and China. They argued that the Sudan needed more time to comply and that intervention could destabilize the government, which recently ended a 20-year-civil war.

The idea that the homicidal regime in Khartoum will respond positively if given more time is a laughable delusion. The 17-month conflict already has laid waste to vast stretches of Darfur, forcing more than a million people into refugee camps and leaving 2.2 million others in dire need of food and medical attention.

The United Nations already has given Sudan too much time, and it has yet to comply with demands to stop the killing. The raids on villages are backed up by government troops and bombers.

The government will stop the killing only when it is forced to stop. That can be accomplished by imposing full and immediate economic sanctions and an arms embargo, and by deploying peacekeeping troops and massive humanitarian assistance into Darfur.

The African Union already plans to send 300 troops and 150 unarmed observers into Sudan. With international funding and logistical assistance, it could send a larger force capable of protecting the remaining villages, as well as refugees and the aid workers eager to help them.

European nations - in particular France, which has military bases in nearby Djibouti and Chad - should lead the way. The United States, with its military already overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan, needn't carry the load on this mission, and U.S. officials already have committed $300 million in relief assistance.

The world must not stand by, as it stood by a decade ago when up to a million Rwandans were killed. The government of Sudan is committing murder on a massive scale, and the killing must be stopped.