Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sudan's government is sponsoring atrocities in its western Darfur region that amount to genocide, buttressing the U.S. case for the United Nations to levy economic sanctions on the African nation.

``We conclude that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility,'' Powell told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting in Washington.

Powell said the U.S. will ask the UN for a ``full-blown and unfettered'' probe of its evidence that Sudan's government is arming and backing the Janjaweed militia, Arab fighters who have driven 1.3 million tribal Africans from their homes in Darfur, killing as many as 100,000 and sending hundreds of thousands more to refugee camps in neighboring Chad. The U.S. yesterday proposed a UN resolution threatening Sudan with economic sanctions.

Sudan belongs to a UN accord that obliges parties to prevent and punish acts of genocide. ``To us, at this time, it appears that Sudan has failed to do so,'' Powell told the panel.

Sudanese Finance Minister Ahmed Hassan al-Zubeir called the Darfur conflict ``an internal tribal problem'' that the government in Sudan would solve, Agence France-Press reported from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, where al-Zubeir was attending a meeting of the African Union.

1,136 Refugees Interviewed

The State Department, along with Powell's testimony, presented a report based on interviews with 1,136 randomly selected refugees at 19 locations in Chad. The report cites ``a consistent and widespread pattern of atrocities committed against non-Arab villagers in the Darfur region.''

``Most respondents said government forces, militia fighters, or a combination of both had completely destroyed their villages,'' the report said. ``Sixty-one percent of the respondents witnessed the killing of a family member; 16 percent said they had been raped or had heard about a rape from a victim. About one-third of the refugees heard racial epithets while under attack.''

The conflict in Darfur dates to the 1980s, when the Sudanese government began arming local Arab tribes so they could help the government battle the opposition Sudanese People's Liberation Army, according to the State Department report.

The Arab fighters -- Janjaweed means ``armed man on a horse'' -- then began using their military strength to resolve old disputes over land and water rights, the report said. After Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir seized power in 1989, his new Muslim government disarmed non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur but allowed its Arab allies to keep their weapons, it said.

In a separate conflict, Bashir's government signed peace agreements with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army in May, aimed at ending more than two decades of civil war that has killed more than 1.5 million people.

UN Resolution

The UN resolution proposed yesterday by the U.S. threatens Sudan with economic penalties, including limits on Sudan's oil sector, if the government doesn't stop the killings in Darfur region and allow more African Union peacekeepers into the area.

The U.S. does not plan any Pentagon involvement beyond supplying military advisers who are helping the African Union peacekeepers and hiring private contractors, Powell said.

``We're prepared to support them, principally through contractor support,'' Powell said. ``We know how to hire aircraft. We know how to engage commercial companies that can provide housing, medicine, food, water, the other necessities of keeping a force in the field.''

The UN is scheduled to discuss the resolution today. No vote is expected.

Resistance From Arab League

The U.S. may have trouble winning UN Security Council approval for its proposal, due to factors that include a loss of U.S. credibility due to the invasion of Iraq, said Stephen Morrison, who heads the Africa program at the bipartisan Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Arab League opposes action against the Muslim government in Khartoum, Morrison said. And China, which has a veto on the Security Council, is the largest investor in a Sudanese pipeline project that, according to the U.S. Energy Department, moves about 270,000 barrels of Sudan's estimated 345,000 barrels in daily production, mostly exported to China and India.

Both China and council member Pakistan ``have shown some reluctance'' to impose sanctions on Sudan, Powell told the Foreign Relations Committee.

``We will have a challenge getting full support for this resolution,'' he said.

`Who Pays Attention to UN?'

The committee's Republican chairman, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, asked why anyone in Sudan should fear U.S. threats of tougher action. ``Does anybody, including the government of Sudan, pay any attention to the UN,'' Lugar said.

Powell said sanctions against oil companies in Sudan ``would cut the revenues of the government significantly.''

``I can't tell whether that would produce the kind of change that we would like to see, or whether it would have other kinds of consequences on that government that we might not like to see,'' Powell said.

``The Sudanese government has responded in some instances, and it has not responded in others,'' he said. ``And we've got to keep the pressure up and calibrate the pressure in a way that does not kick in the law of unintended consequences and we find ourselves with an even more difficult situation.''

The U.S. is party to the 1948 UN convention on genocide. Powell told the panel that the U.S. findings require ``no new action'' by the U.S.

`Political Pressure'

Hurst Hannum, an international law professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School, said the finding doesn't impose new obligations on the U.S. but does increase the political pressure for international action.

``My view, and I'm relatively conservative on intervention, I think Darfur does meet the test'' for outside intervention, Hannum said. ``I think it's one of those situations where if the Americans can't do it, the Europeans certainly could do it.''

``Because the U.S. has been so interventionist everywhere else in the world, particularly Iraq, it really can't do much in Darfur right now,'' Hannum said. ``The administration on Darfur and on Sudan have generally been taking the right approach, but because no one trusts the United States to do anything, because we're stretched thin militarily, I don't know what we can do now.''

In addition to the UN action, a group of activists including the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Washington's former delegate to Congress, plans to launch a new campaign designed to publicly pressure companies -- including ABB Ltd., Siemens AG, Alcatel SA, OAO Tatneft and PetroChina Co. -- to stop investing in Sudan.

The coalition also has compiled a list of 86 public pension and retirement funds, including the New York State Teacher's Retirement System and the California Public Employees Retirement System, that together have more than $91 billion invested in companies with investments in Sudan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Basken in Washington at pbasken@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 9, 2004 15:33 EDT