Q: Mr. Secretary, Sudan. You may have commented on this, I know, in several venues, but is this genocide, and is the international community incredibly slow and not living up to their obligations in helping the people there?

Q: Was it ethnic cleansing? Was it genocide? Based on the reports you have received.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan: Based on reports that I have received, I can’t at this stage call it genocide. There are massive violations of international humanitarian law, but I am not ready to describe it as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet.

— Thursday, June 17 press conference

Truth-telling has never been popular within the U.N., but Kofi Annan is taking diplobabble to a new level, in the process giving a green light to Sudan’s extermination campaign of black African tribes in the Darfur region. When the secretary-general was asked several times to comment on the killings in Darfur, Mr. Annan refused to threaten or chastise or even criticize the government in Sudan. Indeed, he refused even to call it the forced ethnic cleansing it clearly is.

The massive displacement and multiple massacres in Darfur are not a random attack on people who happen to be African Fur, Zaghawa or Massalit, but rather a deliberate attack on those ethnic groups with the aim of eradicating a substantial part of them. This was reported last month by The New York Sun’s Dina Temple-Raston and photographer Konrad Fiedler. It has now affected more than 2 million of the region’s 6.2 million persons.

For a U.N. that couldn’t describe Sad dam Hussein as the mass murderer he was, for a U.N. that took no action to stop last decade’s Rwanda genocide and Bosnia ethnic cleansing, perhaps Mr. Annan’s moral relativism should not be surprising. But if the secretary-general cannot call genocide and ethnic cleansing by their names, there are his own U.N. reports, which describe a “reign of terror” spearheaded by the government of Sudan. International human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented that the ethnic cleansing is continuing unabated.

The Arab government in Khartoum has enlisted Arab militias called Janjaweed against Sudanese whose offense is to be black instead of Arab. An April cease-fire seems only to have given the Sudan and its Arab Janjaweed militias more time to continue killing and displacing the tribal ethnic groups, who make up the California-size Darfur region. Tens of thousands have been killed. Those — particularly women and children — lucky enough to survive the first round of killings now face death from starvation as food supplies dwindle and rains threaten to make roads impassable. America estimates that 300,000 will die soon if action is not taken.

After months of the Security Council refusing to issue a strong condemnation of the government of Sudan (a mild statement was passed at the behest of America at the end of May), Mr. Annan announced this week he plans to go to Sudan. But already it seems he is pulling his punches — and prejudging what he may find on the ground. It is clear why the killers of Khartoum want the U.N.’s diplomatic embrace, but not at all clear why Mr. Annan would give it.