Kerry: Sudan Should Not Be New Rwanda

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, Sept 9 (AFP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Thursday that the United States should not allow the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to be repeated in Sudan's Darfur region.
"We simply cannot accept another Rwanda," Kerry told the National Baptist Convention USA.
"The United States should ensure the immediate deployment of an effective international force to disarm militia, protect civilians and facilitate delivery of humanitarian assistance in Darfur," he told the meeting of black Protestant churches here.
"If I were president, I would act now. As I've said for months, I would not sit idly by," Kerry told the group.
Earlier Thursday US Secretary of State Colin Powell accused Sudan's government and Arab Janjaweed militias of committing genocide in the majority black African region of Darfur.
Kerry said President George W. Bush "should immediately appoint an American ambassador to the African Union, as we have long had an ambassador to the European Union.
"The United States should not treat Africa as a second-class continent."