UNITED NATIONS, United States (UPI) -- The actor George Clooney has stepped up his efforts on behalf of people in the violence-ravaged Darfur region of Sudan, traveling to China and Egypt and meeting Friday with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan at U.N. World Headquarters in New York. It was Clooney`s second visit to the United Nations; in September, he met with the U.N. Security Council, just weeks after the council had pushed through a plan to install 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur. Any action, however, would have to await the consent of Khartoum, but Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir gave a strident objection, calling a U.N. force equal to a second colonization of his country.
For his part, Clooney echoed the words of U.S. President George W. Bush, calling the Darfur situation the first genocide of the 21st century and saying the international community had a moral obligation to put a stop to it.
| Well, at least the reporter noticed. It's UPI, not AP, of course. |