The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has urged the Security Council to act quickly to stop atrocities in Sudan and to use the International Criminal Court to try perpetrators of violence in the Darfur region.
The call came despite an insistence by the United States that attacks by Sudanese government forces and its allied militias on civilians in the region did not amount to genocide.
A UN report had found that the violence had stopped short of this.
The Bush administration opposes the international court, which is based in The Hague, and wants others sanctions imposed on Khartoum.
