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State Dept.: Sudan Genocide Hard to Prove.

As human rights groups demand action against Sudan, the State Department is informing Congress it is difficult to establish that the Khartoum government is trying to destroy the non-Arab community in Darfur. And even if Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has been weighing a judgment for weeks, decides that Sudan and Arab-led militia in the province are committing genocide, the Bush administration would not be required to take legal action, the department said in an informal analysis obtained by The Associated Press. [more ]

re-post:

-WHAT IS GENOCIDE?

Genocide is foremost an international crime for which individuals, no matter how high in authority, may be indicted, tried, and punished by the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to Article 6 of the ICC Statute, This crime involves, "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
  • (a) Killing members of the group;
  • (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  • (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." [more ] and [more]