"Sudan Camp Is Moved Before U.N. Visit. There were only donkeys milling around in a soggy, trash-strewn lot on Thursday afternoon when the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, and his entourage arrived at what was supposed to be a crowded squatter camp here in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan.

Gone were the more than 1,000 residents of the Meshtel settlement. Gone as well were their makeshift dwellings. Hours before Mr. Annan's arrival, the local authorities had loaded the camp's inhabitants aboard trucks and moved them.

Aid workers who had visited the camp earlier said that before its sudden evacuation, Meshtel was a desperate place in which displaced people lived packed together in makeshift shelters on ground flooded from recent rains.

"Where are the people?" Mr. Annan was overheard asking a Sudanese official who was accompanying his tour of Darfur, the region in western Sudan where the government has been accused of unleashing armed militias on the local population to quell a rebel uprising.

Al Noor Muhammad Ibrahim, minister of social affairs for the state of North Darfur, explained that the camp on Mr. Annan's itinerary no longer existed. He said the government had relocated its residents the evening before, sometime after United Nations officials had paid a visit at 5 p.m. on Wednesday in preparation for a stop by Mr. Annan. . ."

"The Security Council passed a resolution on Friday that threatens the Sudanese government with punitive measures if it does not disarm and prosecute Arab militias that have forced black Africans off their land in the Darfur region of western Sudan through a campaign of killing, rape and pillage.

". . . Passage was achieved after the United States revised the measure to drop the word sanctions and substitute a reference to an article of the United Nations Charter that in effect lays out economic and diplomatic sanctions as the likely consequences of noncompliance with the resolutions.

"Principal among those demands is the call on the government in Khartoum to show tangible progress in disarming and bringing to justice the marauding militias in 30 days. Under the terms of the measure, the Security Council will receive reports every month on whether Sudan is fulfilling its commitments or should be subject to international sanctions.

"The Arab militias, known as Janjaweed and equipped by the Sudanese government, are accused of killing up to 30,000 darker skinned Africans, raping women and girls, destroying crops and polluting water supplies in a campaign that United Nations officials say constitutes ethnic cleansing and Congress has called genocide. More than one million people have fled to refugee camps in Sudan and Chad.

". . . In Khartoum, Information Minister Al-ahawi Ibrahim Malik was . . . explicit in expressing the government's displeasure. 'Sudan announces its rejection of the Security Council's misguided resolution,' he said, according to Reuters

"Sudan signed a joint communque' in Khartoum with Secretary General Kovi Annan on July 3 pledging to rein in the violence in Darfur, and Mr. Erwa complained Friday that the accord was now being used as a 'Trojan horse' by 'some activists within the U. S. administration' to bring military pressure on the Islamic government in Khartoum.

"He said that his government had responded immediately to the terms of the communique', deploying police officers and arresting militia members, but that the United States and its allies on the Security Council had acted in a "colonial' fashion.

"'Aren't these the very same states that we see daily on TV monitors and their massive military machine while they are practicing the occupation of nations, pouring their fire on innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan?' he asked.

In Cairo, Hossasm Zaki, a spokesman for the Arab League, asked, 'How come the Security Council and those with a humanitarian agenda are so active when it comes to such a situation, when they turn a blind eye to the miserable situation in the Palestinian territories?'

Rights groups had been hoping for a stronger resolution, and Adotei Akwei, a spokesman for Amnesty International in Washington, said the organization was 'extremely disappointed' with the weakened language on sanctions. 'It represents the abandonment of the people of Darfur and an abdication of the Security Council's role as a human rights enforcing agent,' he said. . .

"Crisis in Sudan: Thorny Issues Underlying Carnage in Darfur Complicate World's Response. There is no disagreement about the consequences of the war under way in Sudan, Africa's largest country: tens of thousands killed, cholera outbreaks, severe malnutrition, more than a million people forced to flee their homes, many into neighboring countries like Chad.

"Yet there is deep disagreement among world leaders over how to respond. The stalemate comes from issues underlying the conflict in Darfur, a region in western Sudan: questions of racial identity, competition for natural resources and the imperatives of a powerful sovereign state.

"Unfortunately for the victims of the war, the international response is also complicated by issues that reach beyond the conflict. First, in pitting Arab herders against black African farmers, the civil war in western Sudan underscores a larger struggle for power, land and water that cuts across borders in this arid part of Africa. Second, efforts to address the Darfur crisis have become entangled in the larger grievances of the Arab world--not least, the United States--dominated war in Iraq.

"The result? The Arab Islamist government of Sudan, joined by its allies in the Arab League, has angrily accused Western countries of ganging up against an Arab-led government to exploit its oil and gold reserves. The Bush administration has dismissed that contention, and the United States Congress has accused the Arab militias, backed by Sudan and known as the Janjaweed, of genocide against Darfur's black Africans. Nearly 150,000 black Africans have fled to seek refuge on the barren eastern frontiers of Chad.

"The United Nations, meanwhile, has threatened unspecified penalties if Sudan cannot prove by Aug. 31 that it can restore stability. Sudan and its allies have resolutely opposed outside intervention, like the deployment of foreign peacekeeping forces. And Europe and the United States have left it to the fledgling African Union, which represents the continent's governments, to handle matters on the ground.

"The Darfur crisis has presented a stark challenge to African leaders: How is Africa to live with its diversity, specifically its Arab and black African mix, and how the continent's leaders, in fashioning a response to Darfur, to balance the claims of sovereign state and an emergency facing ordinary African's? Fortunately, for African leaders, this conflict has no religious divide: both sides are Muslims.

". . . Since February 2003, the war in Darfur, sparked by a rebel insurgency demanding political and economic rights for the people of western Sudan, has killed 50,000 civilians and displaced more than a million Sudanese, the United Nations estimates. . . ."