WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (AFP) - US lawmakers returning from Sudan called on President George W. Bush Thursday to do more for Darfur, pointing to the outpouring of international aid for Asian tsunami victims.
"We must insist that there are sanctions," Democratic Representative Barbara Lee.
"It's not a military thing we have to do," said Democratic colleague Jim McDermott, a physician who has worked in Africa.
"It's a matter of pressing the UN and the Arab leaders with soft diplomacy," he said.
"Some very adverse trends are strengthening in North and Central Africa, including the spread of radical Islam," said Republican Ed Royce.
"To the extent that chaos prevails, as it is in Darfur, it is a more fertile field for its spread through this region, which is a grave concern to me," he said.
Royce, McDermott, Lee and other US lawmakers last week visited four refugee camps in Darfur in Sudan and in neighboring Chad.
Accompanying them was actor Don Cheadle, nominated for an Oscar for his role in a film on a genocide a decade ago, "Hotel Rwanda."
He launched an appeal Thursday for a broad-based mobilization to demand US officials take the lead in ending what he called "tsunamis of violence" in Darfur.
Outgoing US secretary of state Colin Powell on September 9 called the violence in Darfur "genocide," a move that drew scant attention from the international community.
The African Union currently has about 1,700 peacekeeping troops on the ground in Darfur and is charged with monitoring a ceasefire.
Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died, many from hunger and disease, in the past several months alone in Darfur.
Since war broke out two years ago, some 1.5 million people have been displaced, many into squalid and dangerous camps, largely as a result of attacks by Janjaweed militias.
01/27/2005 18:27 GMT - AFP