The United States is officially disputing the claim by a special U.N. panel that the crisis in Darfur does not amount to "genocide." The 177-page report from a five-member U.N. commission charged with investigating allegations of genocide in Sudan made these conclusions:

1. There was a massacre of as many as 400,000 mostly Christian southern Sudanese people.

2. Under international law, this constitutes serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws.

3. This cannot be considered "genocide."

According to the United Nations, there are over 1.6 million "internally displaced persons" in Darfur and more than 200,000 "refugees" who have moved into neighboring Chad.

The United Nations also says that there has been large-scale destruction of villages throughout the three states of Darfur. "But there is no evidence of genocide." (It should be noted that Khartoum expressed "relief" at the U.N.´s determination and promised to "bring the guilty to justice.")

The Genocide Treaty of 1948 defines "genocide" as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Sudan is essentially divided along religious lines, and is ruled from the Islamic north. The south is almost entirely Christian, with a few animists or other non-Muslims.

The Islamic north is not only murdering wholesale non-Muslims in the south, it is offering Christians the following choice – renounce Jesus as Lord and convert to Islam or be put to death by the sword. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered as a result.

It takes some pretty fancy diplomatic footwork to make a case that what is happening in Sudan isn´t "genocide." Unlike Bill Clinton´s wrangling over the meaning of the word "is," genocide has a clear, legal definition. Under the Genocide Treaty, forced conversion of an identifiable religious group is "genocide." For Sudanese Muslims to be proven innocent of genocide by the United Nations, it would have to prove that Muslims are not attempting to destroy the Sudanese Christians in the face of voluminous evidence.

Sudanese Vice President Ali Taha reaffirmed Islam´s policy in Sudan´s government last October. He brazenly declared, "The jihad is our way."

The State Department´s Richard Boucher told reporters in reaction to the report, "We stand by the conclusion that we reached that genocide had been occurring in Darfur ... Nothing has happened to change those conclusions. We stand by those conclusions."

In 1994, the United Nations was similarly reluctant to apply the word "genocide" in Rwanda. In that case, members of the rival tribe of Hutus massacred almost a million members of the Rwandan Tutsi tribe in 100 days of bloodlust.

After 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed in the crossfire, the United Nations "bravely" withdrew and let the bloodletting continue, while Rwanda´s representative, at the time a member of the Security Council, argued that claims of genocide were "exaggerated."

In 2004, Kofi Annan designated April 7 as the "International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda" for which he called for – I´m not making this up – a moment of silence. Annan declared, "let us, by what we do in one single minute, send a message – a message of remorse for the past, resolve to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again – and let´s make it resound for years to come."

Years to come? The United Nations didn´t even make it until the following April before letting another "non-genocide" genocide happen again.

The United Nations proves its irrelevancy once again by refusing to use the magic word, "genocide." And why is the United Nations reluctant? That one is easy to answer. This would require the United Nations to immediately take action to stop the slaughter. And it is not surprising that most of the people being slaughtered are Christians. The United Nations can easily get way with inaction to rescue Christians because fellow Christians do very little to express the outrage that is due. By contrast, Muslims howl over the slightest insult to fellow Muslims and spawn terrorists to accent their protest. This gets a great deal of the U.N.´s attention.

The United Nations has proven itself to be a place where the perpetrators of international crimes who violate the U.N. laws argue endlessly about how they haven´t broken them. The United Nations is simply a debating society for tyrants and human-rights violators to protest their innocence. In the meantime, the United Nations continues to take no enforcing action whatsoever to stop violations of its declarations. It has failed to enforce the most basic reason for which it was created – to prevent "genocide."

Let me say that again. The United Nations was created for the express purpose of preventing from ever happening again the genocide that took place during World War II.

Ironically, it has now become its facilitator. It has become the thing it was created to prevent – a malevolent, global facilitator of evil in dark places around the globe. The only thing more frightening to contemplate is this – what will arise to replace the United Nations when it finally arrives on the ash heap of history. Bible prophecy gives us the answer. There is a one-world government waiting in the wings. It only awaits the unveiling of its ultimate "leader" – the Antichrist. (© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc. 02/03/05)