Nairobi — A United States congressman last week joined a leading anti-genocide activist in urging the Bush administration to consider military strikes on Sudan in order to end the mass killings in Darfur.

"Credible threats of military actions will help alter the calculations of officials in Khartoum," declared John Prendergast, a policy specialist with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

The Bush administration should seek United Nations Security Council approval for establishing and enforcing a no-fly zone over the Darfur region of western Sudan, Prendergast said.

Washington must also rally support for a "non-consensual ground-force deployment" inside Sudan, he added.

Ground troops mobilised by the United States may well be needed should Sudan try to send its own forces into Darfur in response to establishment of a no-fly zone, Mr Prendergast warned.

Representative Donald Payne, a leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, endorsed Mr Prendergast's views, adding, "We should simply destroy their air force" should the Sudanese violate a US-imposed no-fly zone over part of their national territory.

Recalling that the United States had effectively prevented Saddam Hussein's air force, from flying over vast sections of Iraq, Congressman Payne said the same could be done in Sudan.

The calls for American-led military intervention came as a committee of the US Congress heard film actress Mia Farrow make an emotionally charged plea for action to alleviate the horrors inflicted on black Africans in Darfur by Arab-led militias known as Janjaweed.

More than 200,000 members of black African tribes are estimated to have been killed in Darfur during the past four years. President George W Bush has labelled the killings "genocide."

Ms Farrow, a Unicef Goodwill ambassador who has visited Darfur four times, showed the congressional panel photos she has taken there of starving children, mutilated men and bereaved women whose children have been murdered by the Janjaweed.

"Rape is a common occurrence among women who leave displaced-persons camps in Darfur in order to gather firewood," Ms Farrow told about 20 members of the US Congress attending the session.

The crowded and ornate committee room on Capitol Hill in Washington grew hushed on April 19 as Ms Farrow commented on the photos being shown on a pair of TV screens.

She said a woman in a displaced-persons camp in Darfur had urged her. "Tell people what is happening here. Tell them we need help."

Ms Farrow added, "My moral mandate was clear to me from that moment on."

The calls for US military intervention in Sudan reflect mounting frustration on the part of Darfur-focused activists and some US Congress members over the Bush administration's purely rhetorical response to the Sudanese government's complicity in the Janjaweed's slaughters.

Many advocates had expected President Bush to finally announce imposition of strict sanctions on Sudan in a speech he gave at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on April 18. But after warning that "the time for promises is over - President [Omar Hassan] Bashir must act," Bush said he would give Bashir "a short period of time" to accept deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur.

The American leader did threaten to break almost all financial ties between the US and Sudan. But he did not specify when such actions might be taken.

Sudan said recently that it would accept deployment of 3,000 UN police officers and six attack helicopters in Darfur. Western diplomats express doubt that Khartoum will actually allow such a force to enter Darfur as the first wave of an envisioned 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping force.

The African Union has maintained some 8,000 peacekeepers in Darfur for the past two years, but that deployment is widely viewed as inadequate, given that the killings of civilians have continued unabated during that time.

A confidential UN report leaked to the press last week meanwhile indicated that Sudan's air force has been flying large quantities of weapons into Darfur in violation of UN sanctions. The flights are said to have been made by Sudanese aircraft painted to resemble United Nations planes.