Madam, - It is disheartening to read that EU and UN diplomats are failing to gain approval from the Sudanese government to allow a peacekeeping force into Darfur. It is entirely dispiriting that such permission is being sought, bargained and waited for.
The Government in Khartoum has, from the very beginning, been intimately linked with the roving, murderous Janjaweed militias which have lain waste to much of Darfur, and which have employed every instrument of brutality - rape, torture, murder - against its citizens.
The approach of government arms and helicopters have often preceded attacks from the Janjaweed; eye-witness accounts, independent analysts and investigative journalists have all confirmed the close join between the two.
The campaign against the people of Darfur is not one of haphazard, random killings, but of targeted and systematic counter-insurgency, carried out in order to smash a local rebellion. As such, the genocide is not merely a policy of outright extermination, but of maintaining political control.
That we should now seek the approval of the killers to put an end to the killing defies all sense, and must offend any conscience. An immediate military presence is required, not to keep a "peace" that has seen some 300,000 people killed, but to enforce one. Dealing with the Government of Sudan merely delays this urgent task. - Yours, etc,
SEAN COLEMAN,
Brian Avenue,
Marino,
Dublin 3.