Washington, DC — The international community has a responsibility to act immediately to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant Administrator Roger Winter said during a panel discussion last week that focused on the crisis in the Darfur region of that east African nation.

It will take international cooperation to solve the crisis, Winter said, and the United States will not act unilaterally, unless the killing in Darfur is legally declared to be genocide. "Genocide is a legal term," Winter said. "I can say that the Secretary of State has asked, formally, for a legal definition by the U.S. government."

Winter was one of four panelists at a Voice of America forum Thursday. Another speaker, Dr. Francis Deng, the representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, said the situation in Darfur requires immediate action, not legal deliberations. The crisis will worsen unless and until international intervention takes place, Deng said.

"The tragedy of what happened in Rwanda was that people were arguing whether it was genocide, or not," Deng added. "We were able to say genocide" only after massive killing occurred. Deng urged the international community to quickly mobilize the resources required to protect the lives of civilians in the region.

"We are not talking only of humanitarian aid," Deng said. "We are talking about protection -- saving lives.' Both Deng and Winter called on international bodies like the African Union and the Arab League to assist with this security effort. USAID projects that 350,000 people could die in Darfur by the end of this year, Winter said.

The panel included Abel Bagi Kabeir, the deputy chief of mission of the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, who agreed that action must be taken to saves lives. But he denied that the Sudanese government has supported Janjaweed militias who have burned villages, raped women, killed thousands and chased more than a million civilians from their homes.

"There is no relationship between the government and the Janjaweed, and that is the position of the government: that the government does not support the Janjaweed," Kabeir said. The trouble in western Sudan stems from "inter-tribal conflict," the diplomat said, and all combatants that are not part of the Sudanese armed forces must be disarmed.