The international community ponders whether to identify the genocide in Darfur by name: The Brussels-based International Crisis Group says Darfur can "easily become as deadly" as the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Then, soldiers, militiamen and civilians of the Hutu majority killed more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus in 100 days. All along, Sudan has denied allegations of complicity with the Arab militias and has blamed rebels for rights violations. In February 2003, the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit black tribes rebelled against what they regarded as unjust treatment by the Sudanese government in their historic struggle over land and resources with their Arab countrymen. Countless thousands of tribesmen have died in a brutal counterinsurgency. The conflict has uprooted more than 1 million, and the U.S. government believes this many could die unless a peace settlement is reached and relief supply deliveries are greatly accelerated. Sudanese cooperation has been limited but is improving. The Muslim-vs.-Muslim conflict is separate from the 21-year war between ethnic Arab Muslim militants in northern Sudan and the black African non-Muslim south. That three-decade-long struggle may be ending thanks to peace accords signed last month. A U.S. interagency review is aimed at judging whether the Darfur tragedy qualifies as genocide under a 1946 international convention that outlaws the practice. "I believe what is occurring in Sudan approaches the level of genocide," says Jim Kolbe, a Republican lawmaker. He and several colleagues are pushing for $95 million in emergency assistance for Darfur's victims...A role for the United Nations is made clear under Article 8 of the Genocide Convention: "Any contracting party may call upon the competent organs of the U.N. to take such action under the Charter of the U.N. as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide."U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he wasn't ready to describe the situation in Darfur "as genocide or ethnic cleansing yet," but he called it "a tragic humanitarian situation." For now, the U.S. government seems to be tilting against the genocide label but is sticking with ethnic cleansing to describe the situation. Meanwhile, as Human Rights Watch reports, the killing is spreading: Human Rights Watch documented at least seven cross-border incursions into Chad conducted by the Janjaweed militias since early June. The Janjaweed attack villages in Chad and refugees from Darfur, and also steal cattle. The same Arab and African ethnic groups live on both sides of border in Chad and Darfur. Meanwhile, Chadians living near the border are organized into self-defense groups to protect their families and livestock from Janjaweed raids. These self-defense groups have reportedly clashed with the Janjaweed militia. “The Sudanese government must take full responsibility for the militia raids into Chad,” said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Janjaweed are the government’s militia, and Khartoum has armed and empowered it to conduct ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Darfur.”