WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Powell declared yesterday that the campaign of militia-backed violence against civilians in Darfur, Sudan, amounted to genocide, and he called on the United Nations to take action to prevent it.

Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Powell said that after reviewing evidence compiled by teams sent to refugee camps in Chad to interview villagers, first reported last month by The New York Sun, he determined that a genocide occurred in the western Sudanese province of Darfur.

“When we reviewed the evidence compiled by our team and then put it beside other information available to the State Department and widely known throughout the international community, widely reported upon by the media and by others, we concluded, I concluded, that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility – and that genocide may still be occurring,” he said.

The State Department’s decision to label as genocide the atrocities in Darfur, where more than 1 million have been displaced and up to 50,000 killed, mark the first time a member of the United Nations has invoked the portion of the U.N. convention against genocide that calls on international action to prevent it while the violence is still taking place.

Mr. Powell yesterday called on Sudan, whose government has signed the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide, to act to stop it. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whether America or the United Nations is prepared to act should the Sudanese continue to drag their feet.

A draft resolution against Sudan, circulated Wednesday, does not mention sanctions and gives Khartoum another 30 days to arrest leaders of the Janjaweed militia and prevent the violence that has continued against Darfuri villagers. An earlier resolution that expired at the end of August gave the Sudanese a similar deadline, but to date no major leaders of the Janjaweed militias have been arrested.

The new resolution does specifically mention the possibility of measures taken against Sudan’s oil infrastructure, the country’s largest export. China, which owns a controlling stake in Sudan’s national oil company, has threatened to veto any resolution that even mentions sanctions.

China’s U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, told the Sun’s Benny Avni yesterday, “As far as we can see from the report of the Secretary General, we are making progress on the ground and also there are problems. Our main approach by the Security Council in this stage is trying to be helpful for the African Union…. We always believe that sanctions in many cases are counterproductive.”

Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations yesterday accused America of trying to undermine international efforts to bring stability to Darfur.

“While the majority of the international community is putting emphasis on the engagement of the Government of Sudan and the good of the Sudanese people, the draft resolution is addressing the issue contrary to that,” Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa said in a statement released yesterday, adding that the resolution put his country in a position of “doomed if you do, doomed if you don’t.”

Mr. Erwa also pointed out that the African Union’s report from earlier this year did not invoke genocide, but his statement failed to mention that the African Union report was drafted before the organization sent monitors to the region. The African Union is preparing a peacekeeping force that Washington had hoped Sudan would welcome. But last month, Sudan’s foreign ministry rejected the peacekeepers.

The State Department report, based on 1,136 randomly selected interviews of refugees forced to flee to Chad, further dispels Sudan’s contention that its military had no role in aiding the ethnic-cleansing campaign of the Janjaweed against the non-Arab Muslim tribes of Zaghawa, Massalit, and Fur.

“Respondents said government and militia forces wore khaki or brown military uniforms,” the report says. “Roughly one-half of the respondents noted (Sudanese) forces had joined Janjaweed irregulars in attacking their villages.” The report goes on to say that eyewitnesses spoke of Sudanese helicopters bombing villages before militias rode in, and in some cases bombing people as they fled the villages. Nine out of 10 respondents said there was no rebel activity before most of the attacks.

While the State Department’s report is by no means the most graphic account of the atrocities in Darfur, it is the most comprehensive and rigorous report to date. Mr. Powell has said the data compiled from the refugees in Chad may be used to build a war-crimes case against militia leaders.

A senior adviser to the International Crisis Group and a former senior director for Africa on President Clinton’s national security council, John Prendergast, told the Sun yesterday, “We will know within one week whether this is posturing or serious. At the same time the secretary of state was making a dramatic speech about the most unspeakable crime in the world, Ambassador Danforth was introducing a resolution that has effectively capitulated to the concerns of the other members of the security council.”