Senate Urges Swift Action on Darfur

By REUTERS

Filed at 1:29 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate unanimously urged President George W. Bush to take swift action to stop the genocide that the United States says is occurring in Sudan, and pressed for NATO to send troops and enforce a no-fly zone in the Darfur region.

The Senate passed the resolution on a voice vote late on Thursday.

The resolution also calls on the U.N. Security Council to approve a peace enforcement mission for the region where tens of thousands of people have been killed and 2 million driven from their homes in three years of fighting between rebels and government-allied Arab militias.

``The U.S. must lead international efforts to stop the killing of innocent men, women and children in Darfur,'' said Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat, in a statement on Friday.

``By systematically abusing its own people, the Sudanese government has ceded its sovereignty, and the plight of the victims is now the concern of every civilized nation in the world,'' said Biden, top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who co-sponsored the measure with Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas.

The U.N. Security Council has started contingency planning to send U.N. troops to help the African Union mission, which has 7,000 troops monitoring the desert region that is the size of France and has said it is running low on funds.

But it could take a number of months to deploy U.N. troops, and it first requires African Union permission.

Biden said a NATO mission would help the AU until the United Nations was ready to take over.