BRITAIN and the United States have taken opposite sides in an historic clash over how to mete out justice to the perpetrators of pillage and slaughter in the western Sudanese province of Darfur.

A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last night that crimes under international law had been committed during the government-backed military campaign that has killed tens of thousands of tribespeople in Darfur and driven nearly two million black villagers from their homes.

The five-member panel said it was possible some individuals, including government officials, may have acted with “genocidal intent”. But it concluded that the Arab-led government in Khartoum has not pursued a policy of genocide.

“The crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central government authorities are concerned,” the report said.

“Generally speaking, the policy of attacking, killing and forcibly displacing members of some tribes does not evince a specific intent to annihilate, in whole or in part, a group distinguished on racial, ethnic, national or religious grounds,” it explained.

“Rather, it would seem that those who planned and organised the attacks on villages pursued the intent to drive the victims from their homes primarily for purposes of counterinsurgency warfare.”

The finding is significant because genocide creates a special obligation on governments to act. Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, passed after the Holocaust, all countries “undertake to prevent and to punish” genocide.

The Sudanese Government, which received a copy of the report last week, seized on its conclusion to try to defuse pressure for sanctions and prosecutions against perpetrators of war crimes.

Nevertheless, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, insisted that the world must take action, even if the atrocities do not qualify as genocide.

“Regardless of how the commission describes what is going on in Darfur, there is no doubt that serious crimes have been committed, serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross violations of human rights have taken place and this cannot be allowed to stand,” Mr Annan said at the AU summit in Abuja, Nigeria. “An action will have to be taken regardless of what name one gives to it.”

The report triggered an emotional debate, coming just days after the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, over how the world should deal with the worst present human rights crisis.

The focus of the dispute is the role of the newly created International Criminal Court in The Hague, favoured by Britain and most other countries but strongly opposed by the US.

The unprecedented global court has criminal jurisdiction not over states, like the much-older International Court of Justice, but over individuals.

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