U.N. Names Panel for Darfur Inquiry

Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed an international panel Thursday to investigate whether acts of genocide have taken place in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The commission includes legal and human rights experts from Italy, Peru, Egypt, Pakistan and Ghana.

“The commission has three months to carry out its tasks and report to the secretary-general,” U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.

In a resolution adopted Sept. 18, the U.N. Security Council asked Annan to rapidly appoint a commission to investigate allegations of genocide as well as reports of human rights violations.

Attacks by government-backed Arab militias against non-Arab villagers are believed to have killed more than 50,000 people in Darfur and driven 1.4 million from their homes.

The U.S. Congress and the Bush administration have called the attacks genocide, but the 53-nation African Union has said the conflict is not a case of genocide.

U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said the commission investigating genocide claims in Darfur would be headed by Italian law professor Antonio Cassese, a human rights expert who was president of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia from 1993 to 1997.

In Nairobi, Kenya, peace talks to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan resumed Thursday under the shadow of the Darfur crisis.

The conflict between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the northern government over control of southern Sudan is separate from the clashes in Darfur.

The talks to end the civil war had stalled after international attention shifted to Darfur.