(aje) An international group of activists, including Desmond Tutu, the South African nobel peace prize winner and Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called on Sudan to do more to combat widespread cases of rape in Darfur. The group, called The Elders, said Sudan should hand over war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court. Graca Machel, a women's rights campaigner and wife of Nelson Mandela, said in Khartoum on Thursday: "Every woman told us, we are raped, we are beaten and we are harassed". The group also includes Lakhdar Brahimi, a UN envoy, and Richard Branson, the British businessman who owns the Virgin group. Machel said the Sudanese government had to accept the fact that there was rape and then help form a plan to combat it. The group also called for the speedy deployment of the 26,000-strong UN-AU force in Darfur. Meanwhile, Reuters reports quoting the Ethiopian prime minister that the country will contribute 5,000 troops to the hybrid force. Meles Zenawi said in Addis Ababa on Thursday: "Ethiopia is ready, the troops are equipped, and we are waiting for a request from the AU and the United Nations to disperse the troops to Darfur." Jimmy Carter said Khartoum should hand over to the ICC a junior government minister and militia leader wanted for war crimes. He said it was unacceptable that Khartoum had appointed Ahmed Haroun, state minister for humanitarian affairs, as head of a rights committee. But Carter also criticised the US use of the term genocide to describe the situation in Darfur, where international estimates say 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million driven from their homes, as unhelpful. "There is a legal definition of genocide and Darfur does not meet that legal standard. The atrocities were horrible but I don't think it qualifies to be called genocide," he said. Washington is almost alone in branding the four and a half years of violence in Darfur "genocide".

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