Actor George Clooney and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel told the UN Security Council today the world would be blamed for another Rwanda if atrocities were not halted in Sudan's Darfur region.
"In many ways it is unfair but it is nevertheless true that this genocide will be on your watch. How you deal with it will be your legacy," Clooney said. "Your Rwanda, Your Cambodia, your Auschwitz."
"After September 30 you won't need the UN. You will simply need men with shovels and bleached white linen and headstones," said Clooney.
Wiesel - a Holocaust survivor, writer and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize laureate - warned that "passivity helps the oppressor and not the oppressed" and urged the council to remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
US Ambassador John Bolton had invited the celebrities to an unusual session of the 15-member council to highlight the catastrophe amid continuing UN frustration about Sudan's refusal to allow UN troops to provide safe havens for civilians in Darfur.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003 when non-Arab villagers took up arms because of lack of resources.
The government then mobilised Arab militias, which have conducted a campaign of murder, rape and looting. Fighting, disease and hunger have killed some 200,000 people and driven some 2.5 million into squalid camps.
Sudan is now sending troops to the region to fight rebels who did not sign a faltering May peace agreement.
The African Union has some 7,000 troops in Darfur but is running out of manpower, finances and equipment. Its mandate expires on September 30th.