Religious Leaders Press Policy Makers Amidst Spiraling Violence in Darfur

February 28, 2006

Source: The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Wire Service: RNS

http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=10090

On February 28, 2006 Religion News Service reported, "Religious leaders around the world are continuing to press international policy makers to move from talk to action over the spiraling violence in Sudan's Darfur region.

But Sudan's resistance to non-African peacekeepers and differences between the United States and the United Nations have hampered any unified approach by the international community to what the Bush administration and Congress have labeled genocide.

On Sunday (Feb. 26), Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, arrived in Khartoum for a week-long visit. With the Sudanese conflict in Darfur as well as the ongoing protests over the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad and the sectarian violence in Iraq forming a backdrop for his comments, Williams appealed for tolerance and interreligious understanding.

'So many of these conflicts are about who is to be king,' he said. 'Together as groups, as tribes ... as religions, we know that God alone is king and we can therefore be at peace with each other.'"