Archbishop: No Communion for Giuliani -- Sound like a re-run to anyone?
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke, who made headlines last presidential season by saying he'd refuse Holy Communion to John Kerry, has his eye on Rudy Giuliani this year. Giuliani's response: "Archbishops have a right to their opinion."
"If any politician approached me and he'd been admonished not to present himself, I'd not give it," Burke told the Associated Press Wednesday. "To me, you have to be certain a person realizes he is persisting in a serious public sin."
Asked if the same would apply to politicians who support the death penalty or pre-emptive war, he said, "It's a little more complicated in that case."
Asked about Burke's comments Wednesday while campaigning in New Hampshire, Giuliani said:
"Archbishops have a right to their opinion, you know. There's freedom of religion in this country. There's no established religion, and archbishops have a right to their opinion. Everybody has a right to their opinion."
Burke says that anyone administering Communion — ordained priest or lay minister — is morally obligated to deny it to Catholic politicians who support an abortion-rights position contrary to church teaching.
Burke published an article in April in a church law journal that explored whether it is ever appropriate to deny Communion. Some U.S. bishops interpret church teaching to say that an individual examination of conscience, not a minister, should dictate whether a person is worthy to receive the sacrament.
Burke said denial of Communion is not a judgment. "What the state of his soul is is between God and him," he said.
The nation's bishops are expected to discuss the question again in meetings next month. Burke said he has made no policy proposal, simply laid out his thoughts in the article.
Burke will not be attending the bishops' meeting because of a prior commitment in Rome.
His stance on Giuliani was made public earlier Wednesday in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A number of other Catholic presidential candidates also have abortion-rights stances in apparent conflict with church teaching. Giuliani is the only Catholic among the top-tier candidates.
Giuliani, a Republican, sometimes evokes his Catholic upbringing as he campaigns for president, yet he declines to say whether he is a practicing Catholic. He has been a longtime supporter of abortion rights.
While it is unlikely Giuliani or any other presidential candidate will present himself to Burke for Communion in the next few months, the archbishop's comments revive an issue that could be a factor for churchgoing voters.
In 2004, Burke said he would deny Communion to Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee who supports abortion rights. Several other bishops have said politicians should refrain from the sacrament if they oppose the church on such an important issue.
As for Giuliani, when a voter in Iowa asked him in August if he was a "traditional, practicing Roman Catholic," he said: "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Last week, Giuliani compared the scrutiny of his personal life marked by three marriages to the biblical story in which Jesus said only someone who was free of all sin should try to stone an adulterous woman.
"I'm guided very, very often about, 'Don't judge others, lest you be judged,"' Giuliani told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
"I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger, having studied theology for four years in college," he said.
"So it's a very, very important part of my life," he said. "But I think in a democracy and in a government like ours, my religion is my way of looking at God, and other people have other ways of doing it, and some people don't believe in God. I think that's unfortunate. I think their life would be a lot fuller if they did, but they have that right."
Republicans have been most successful with religious voters — President Bush, a Methodist, won the Catholic vote over Kerry, a Catholic, in 2004 — but Democratic candidates are fighting back and have spoken frequently about their religious beliefs this year.
------------------------------------------
GOP group targets Romney in new TV ad
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press
1 hour, 21 minutes ago
A Republican organization that advocates gay rights is targeting GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in an ad campaign, seeking to undercut his support among social conservatives by highlighting his past statements in support of abortion rights.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has spent months courting social conservatives in key primary states, trying to erase doubts about his previous moderate stands.
But in a 30-second television ad that will air in Iowa and on national cable, the Log Cabin Republicans use clips from a debate during Romney's unsuccessful 1994 campaign for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts to portray him as an enemy of religious conservatives.
"For years he's fought conservatives and religious extremists," an announcer declares.
On the screen, Romney, 13 years younger, is shown in the midst of a debate with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whom he was seeking to unseat.
"I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country," Romney says. "I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it."
Romney has said he changed his view on abortion after a November 2004 meeting with a Harvard stem cell researcher. He said he became convinced he could not be publicly supportive of abortion rights while being personally opposed to abortion.
"As Governor Romney has repeatedly made clear, like many other Republicans including Ronald Reagan, he wasn't always pro-life," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said. "Governor Romney has said he was wrong and hopes he never stops learning from his mistakes or trying to do what's right."
Madden accused the Log Cabin Republicans of favoring Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who has supported abortion rights and some gay rights. Leading religious conservatives have voiced their opposition to Giuliani's candidacy.
Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon said his group is not endorsing any candidate in the Republican primaries. Though he has said in the past, that Giuliani is "a very strong leader with an inclusive record."
"Governor Romney supports a federal marriage amendment and so it makes sense that a national gay rights group would attack him," Madden said.
During the campaign, Romney has supported a plank in the 2004 Republican Party platform that called for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion. He has brushed off questions about his abortion views, stating: "I'm pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that."
The ad's narrator states that Romney "opposed the gun lobby, even Ronald Reagan."
In a clip of the same 1994 debate with Kennedy, Romney states: "I was independent during the time of Reagan-Bush, I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."
The narrator concludes: "A record of fighting the religious right. A pro-choice record. Massachusetts values. Mitt Romney."
Though placed by a gay rights advocacy group, the ad is silent on Romney's views of homosexuality. Lately Romney has been running a radio ad casting himself as the only major GOP candidate backing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. His critics have argued that his views were not as definitive when he was Massachusetts governor.
"The bottom line is this is much more than about gay rights," Sammon said in an interview. "He has been all over the map on every single issue. He quite frankly hasn't credibly explained his shifting positions."
-------------------------------
Dobson to social conservatives: No pro-choice candidate
WASHINGTON (CNN) – James Dobson, a prominent social conservative leader, writes in The New York Times Thursday that conservative voters should not compromise their beliefs just to ensure that a candidate wins the election.
“Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles,” Dobson wrote on the Op-Ed page of the newspaper.
“In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades.”
He added, “Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.”
At the very base, Dobson said a candidate should support “the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles.”
Dobson, who is the founder of Focus on the Family Action, also noted that at a recent meeting with social conservatives in Salt Lake City, there was near unanimity to support a minor party candidate” if none of the major candidates seeking the nomination support their political beliefs.
“After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate,” Dobson wrote. “Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous.”
Dobson’s threat not to back a candidate who supports a strict social conservative agenda appears to hurt former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. But the Giuliani campaign has downplayed the potential threat of third party candidate, noting polls showing strong support for him among church-going evangelicals.
Asked Monday about the potential opposition from social conservatives, Giuliani reiterated his electablitity trump card.
"I run the most competitive against Hillary Clinton by a big big margin and I can take democratic states from her," he said. "Nobody else does that."
-------------------------------
Soaring food prices will hurt world's poor: FAO
Thu Oct 4, 9:06 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Soaring food prices will hurt the world's poor and increase the risks of political upheaval, a senior United Nations food agency official said on Thursday.
"We are squeezed between increasing oil prices and food price hikes," said Alexander Sarris, director, commodities and trade, of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization.
He said the world's poorest people were the most vulnerable to the impact of surging grain prices, driven by falling stocks, rising production costs due to higher energy prices, adverse weather, faster economic growth and increasing biofuels demand.
The slide of the dollar against other currencies had not helped, as budget allocations for aid by the United States, the world's top food aid donor, bought less food, Sarris told Reuters at a commodities conference.
"Food aid shipments are going down because the (U.S.) Congress approves a dollar amount and that means lower quantities being shipped," he said.
Sarris spoke of increasing risks of political instability in developing countries as the world's poorest people struggled with rising food costs.
"Countries might close borders to exports," he said, noting that if food supplies are tight, countries might prevent food from crossing their boundaries.
"A lot of problems going on (in food distribution) means more political upheaval," he added.
Sarris was a keynote speaker at the four-day Commodities Week Europe 2007 conference in London, which concludes on Thursday.
---------------------
Jimmy Carter faces down security in Darfur
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
EL FASHER, Sudan: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter vowed Wednesday he would hold world powers to their pledge of ending the "crime against humanity" taking place in Darfur by deploying a strong peacekeeping force and ensuring democratic elections.
Nobel Peace laureates Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa headed a delegation known as "the Elders" made up of respected international figures seeking to promote peace. The group made Darfur in western Sudan its first mission.
"I'm just a retired politician, but I'll certainly do my best to remind the international community it must fulfill its commitments," toward ending Darfur's crisis, Carter said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday as he was ending his tour of the war-torn Sudanese region.
While describing the conflict, which has claimed 200,000 lives and resulted in more than 2.5 million refugees as a crime, Carter said he disagreed with U.S. George W. Bush and others who call it a genocide.
"Rwanda was definitely a genocide; what Hitler did to the Jews was; but I don't think it's the case in Darfur," said the former president. "I think Darfur is a crime against humanity, but done on a micro scale. A dozen janjaweed attacking here and there," he said, noting that fact that so many refugees have survived the violence.
"I don't think the commitment was to exterminate a whole group of people, but to chase them from their water holes and lands, killing them in the process at random," he said. "I think you can call it ethnic cleansing."
Carter deplored that it had taken such a long time for the international community to mobilize over Darfur, since the conflict erupted in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled against the government, charging it with neglect.
"Because of Iraq, this crisis had been simmering at a lower level," Carter said. "But now, I don't think the attention will wane."
Carter did go out of his way to praise Bush for his efforts to end in 2005 Sudan's other great conflict, the two-decade old civil war between the north and south.
"I urged Bush on his inauguration day to change policy and seek peace in Sudan," Carter said. "I disagree with Bush on just about everything else, but I give him credit for bringing peace in Sudan."
During his tour of Darfur, Carter got a taste of the Sudanese regime's interference with those seeking to help ethnic African civilians when a local state security official barred him from meeting a refugee delegate in the town of Kabkabiya in North Darfur, a stronghold of the pro-government janjaweed militias accused of the worst atrocities.
Carter later played down the incident, saying the Sudanese national security official had "only been doing his job."
"But it's true that I'm not accustomed to people telling me I can't walk down the street and meet people," Carter said after having returned to a United Nations compound in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
Most of the community leaders the mission met during its two-day visit to Darfur appeared to be government-vetted, and several ethnic African delegates told AP they had been intimidated by authorities into turning down invitations from the Elders.
The government denies it has indiscriminately retaliated against ethnic African civilians in the course of putting down the rebellion, but the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued warrants against a Sudanese cabinet minister and a janjaweed chief on 52 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Elders' visit came at a crucial time for Darfur, with a peacekeeping mission of 26,000 United Nations and African Union troops set to come in, and new peace talks between the government and rebels due to begin later this month.
On Sunday, 10 peacekeepers from the current AU force were slain when rebels overran their base in Haskanita, some 150 kilometers south east of El Fasher.
Gen. Martin Agwai, the AU troops' commander, told the Elders that the 7,000-strong force was ill-equipped to fight off the attackers. Agwai said it had also taken over 12 hours to evacuate injured peacekeepers from Haskanita because the AU currently doesn't have its own helicopters.
Tutu said it was "awful" that the AU had come to pacify a region nearly the size of France without the proper gear, funds or armament. The Elders vowed to push for countries to support to the new, hybrid U.N.-AU force due to take over on Jan. 1, and said they would draw up a list of advice for the new Darfur peace talks in neighboring Libya, which Carter anticipated would be "a very difficult process."
"These are important benchmarks ahead of us," Carter said, emphasizing that Sudan's most crucial next step was general elections across the country. The elections are due in 2009 according to a peace agreement signed between Sudan's government and rebels in the south of the country ending the long civil war.
Observers fear that delayed elections could lead to a breakdown in the peace agreement.
Carter, who turned 83 upon his arrival in Khartoum on Sunday, said he met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who had committed to holding the elections on time and invited international observers from his foundation, the Carter Center, to monitor the vote.
Al-Bashir also announced Khartoum had committed US$100 million (€70 million) to a Darfur reconstruction fund, with China pledging another US$200 million (€140 million), Carter said.
Despite all the problems between northern and southern Sudan, Carter said he was convinced neither side was willing to go back to war.
"The elections are a crucial point, both for the stability of southern Sudan and the improvement of Darfur," he said.
The Carter Center has monitored 68 elections worldwide so far, and its founder said he was confident it could help make the vote a success throughout Sudan, even Darfur.
But he questioned the commitment of al-Bashir, who was brought to power in a military and Islamist coup in 1989. "When people have been in power for so long, and in an authoritarian regime like this one, they don't want to endanger their power," the former president said.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke, who made headlines last presidential season by saying he'd refuse Holy Communion to John Kerry, has his eye on Rudy Giuliani this year. Giuliani's response: "Archbishops have a right to their opinion."
"If any politician approached me and he'd been admonished not to present himself, I'd not give it," Burke told the Associated Press Wednesday. "To me, you have to be certain a person realizes he is persisting in a serious public sin."
Asked if the same would apply to politicians who support the death penalty or pre-emptive war, he said, "It's a little more complicated in that case."
Asked about Burke's comments Wednesday while campaigning in New Hampshire, Giuliani said:
"Archbishops have a right to their opinion, you know. There's freedom of religion in this country. There's no established religion, and archbishops have a right to their opinion. Everybody has a right to their opinion."
Burke says that anyone administering Communion — ordained priest or lay minister — is morally obligated to deny it to Catholic politicians who support an abortion-rights position contrary to church teaching.
Burke published an article in April in a church law journal that explored whether it is ever appropriate to deny Communion. Some U.S. bishops interpret church teaching to say that an individual examination of conscience, not a minister, should dictate whether a person is worthy to receive the sacrament.
Burke said denial of Communion is not a judgment. "What the state of his soul is is between God and him," he said.
The nation's bishops are expected to discuss the question again in meetings next month. Burke said he has made no policy proposal, simply laid out his thoughts in the article.
Burke will not be attending the bishops' meeting because of a prior commitment in Rome.
His stance on Giuliani was made public earlier Wednesday in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
A number of other Catholic presidential candidates also have abortion-rights stances in apparent conflict with church teaching. Giuliani is the only Catholic among the top-tier candidates.
Giuliani, a Republican, sometimes evokes his Catholic upbringing as he campaigns for president, yet he declines to say whether he is a practicing Catholic. He has been a longtime supporter of abortion rights.
While it is unlikely Giuliani or any other presidential candidate will present himself to Burke for Communion in the next few months, the archbishop's comments revive an issue that could be a factor for churchgoing voters.
In 2004, Burke said he would deny Communion to Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee who supports abortion rights. Several other bishops have said politicians should refrain from the sacrament if they oppose the church on such an important issue.
As for Giuliani, when a voter in Iowa asked him in August if he was a "traditional, practicing Roman Catholic," he said: "My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests."
Last week, Giuliani compared the scrutiny of his personal life marked by three marriages to the biblical story in which Jesus said only someone who was free of all sin should try to stone an adulterous woman.
"I'm guided very, very often about, 'Don't judge others, lest you be judged,"' Giuliani told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
"I have very, very strong views on religion that come about from having wanted to be a priest when I was younger, having studied theology for four years in college," he said.
"So it's a very, very important part of my life," he said. "But I think in a democracy and in a government like ours, my religion is my way of looking at God, and other people have other ways of doing it, and some people don't believe in God. I think that's unfortunate. I think their life would be a lot fuller if they did, but they have that right."
Republicans have been most successful with religious voters — President Bush, a Methodist, won the Catholic vote over Kerry, a Catholic, in 2004 — but Democratic candidates are fighting back and have spoken frequently about their religious beliefs this year.
------------------------------------------
GOP group targets Romney in new TV ad
By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press
1 hour, 21 minutes ago
A Republican organization that advocates gay rights is targeting GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney in an ad campaign, seeking to undercut his support among social conservatives by highlighting his past statements in support of abortion rights.
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, has spent months courting social conservatives in key primary states, trying to erase doubts about his previous moderate stands.
But in a 30-second television ad that will air in Iowa and on national cable, the Log Cabin Republicans use clips from a debate during Romney's unsuccessful 1994 campaign for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts to portray him as an enemy of religious conservatives.
"For years he's fought conservatives and religious extremists," an announcer declares.
On the screen, Romney, 13 years younger, is shown in the midst of a debate with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, whom he was seeking to unseat.
"I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country," Romney says. "I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years that we should sustain and support it."
Romney has said he changed his view on abortion after a November 2004 meeting with a Harvard stem cell researcher. He said he became convinced he could not be publicly supportive of abortion rights while being personally opposed to abortion.
"As Governor Romney has repeatedly made clear, like many other Republicans including Ronald Reagan, he wasn't always pro-life," Romney spokesman Kevin Madden said. "Governor Romney has said he was wrong and hopes he never stops learning from his mistakes or trying to do what's right."
Madden accused the Log Cabin Republicans of favoring Republican Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York who has supported abortion rights and some gay rights. Leading religious conservatives have voiced their opposition to Giuliani's candidacy.
Log Cabin President Patrick Sammon said his group is not endorsing any candidate in the Republican primaries. Though he has said in the past, that Giuliani is "a very strong leader with an inclusive record."
"Governor Romney supports a federal marriage amendment and so it makes sense that a national gay rights group would attack him," Madden said.
During the campaign, Romney has supported a plank in the 2004 Republican Party platform that called for the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion. He has brushed off questions about his abortion views, stating: "I'm pro-life; it would be great if we could just leave it at that."
The ad's narrator states that Romney "opposed the gun lobby, even Ronald Reagan."
In a clip of the same 1994 debate with Kennedy, Romney states: "I was independent during the time of Reagan-Bush, I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush."
The narrator concludes: "A record of fighting the religious right. A pro-choice record. Massachusetts values. Mitt Romney."
Though placed by a gay rights advocacy group, the ad is silent on Romney's views of homosexuality. Lately Romney has been running a radio ad casting himself as the only major GOP candidate backing a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. His critics have argued that his views were not as definitive when he was Massachusetts governor.
"The bottom line is this is much more than about gay rights," Sammon said in an interview. "He has been all over the map on every single issue. He quite frankly hasn't credibly explained his shifting positions."
-------------------------------
Dobson to social conservatives: No pro-choice candidate
WASHINGTON (CNN) – James Dobson, a prominent social conservative leader, writes in The New York Times Thursday that conservative voters should not compromise their beliefs just to ensure that a candidate wins the election.
“Polls don’t measure right and wrong; voting according to the possibility of winning or losing can lead directly to the compromise of one’s principles,” Dobson wrote on the Op-Ed page of the newspaper.
“In the present political climate, it could result in the abandonment of cherished beliefs that conservative Christians have promoted and defended for decades.”
He added, “Winning the presidential election is vitally important, but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.”
At the very base, Dobson said a candidate should support “the sanctity of human life, the institution of marriage, and other inviolable pro-family principles.”
Dobson, who is the founder of Focus on the Family Action, also noted that at a recent meeting with social conservatives in Salt Lake City, there was near unanimity to support a minor party candidate” if none of the major candidates seeking the nomination support their political beliefs.
“After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate,” Dobson wrote. “Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous.”
Dobson’s threat not to back a candidate who supports a strict social conservative agenda appears to hurt former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination. But the Giuliani campaign has downplayed the potential threat of third party candidate, noting polls showing strong support for him among church-going evangelicals.
Asked Monday about the potential opposition from social conservatives, Giuliani reiterated his electablitity trump card.
"I run the most competitive against Hillary Clinton by a big big margin and I can take democratic states from her," he said. "Nobody else does that."
-------------------------------
Soaring food prices will hurt world's poor: FAO
Thu Oct 4, 9:06 AM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Soaring food prices will hurt the world's poor and increase the risks of political upheaval, a senior United Nations food agency official said on Thursday.
"We are squeezed between increasing oil prices and food price hikes," said Alexander Sarris, director, commodities and trade, of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization.
He said the world's poorest people were the most vulnerable to the impact of surging grain prices, driven by falling stocks, rising production costs due to higher energy prices, adverse weather, faster economic growth and increasing biofuels demand.
The slide of the dollar against other currencies had not helped, as budget allocations for aid by the United States, the world's top food aid donor, bought less food, Sarris told Reuters at a commodities conference.
"Food aid shipments are going down because the (U.S.) Congress approves a dollar amount and that means lower quantities being shipped," he said.
Sarris spoke of increasing risks of political instability in developing countries as the world's poorest people struggled with rising food costs.
"Countries might close borders to exports," he said, noting that if food supplies are tight, countries might prevent food from crossing their boundaries.
"A lot of problems going on (in food distribution) means more political upheaval," he added.
Sarris was a keynote speaker at the four-day Commodities Week Europe 2007 conference in London, which concludes on Thursday.
---------------------
Jimmy Carter faces down security in Darfur
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
EL FASHER, Sudan: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter vowed Wednesday he would hold world powers to their pledge of ending the "crime against humanity" taking place in Darfur by deploying a strong peacekeeping force and ensuring democratic elections.
Nobel Peace laureates Carter and Desmond Tutu of South Africa headed a delegation known as "the Elders" made up of respected international figures seeking to promote peace. The group made Darfur in western Sudan its first mission.
"I'm just a retired politician, but I'll certainly do my best to remind the international community it must fulfill its commitments," toward ending Darfur's crisis, Carter said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday as he was ending his tour of the war-torn Sudanese region.
While describing the conflict, which has claimed 200,000 lives and resulted in more than 2.5 million refugees as a crime, Carter said he disagreed with U.S. George W. Bush and others who call it a genocide.
"Rwanda was definitely a genocide; what Hitler did to the Jews was; but I don't think it's the case in Darfur," said the former president. "I think Darfur is a crime against humanity, but done on a micro scale. A dozen janjaweed attacking here and there," he said, noting that fact that so many refugees have survived the violence.
"I don't think the commitment was to exterminate a whole group of people, but to chase them from their water holes and lands, killing them in the process at random," he said. "I think you can call it ethnic cleansing."
Carter deplored that it had taken such a long time for the international community to mobilize over Darfur, since the conflict erupted in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled against the government, charging it with neglect.
"Because of Iraq, this crisis had been simmering at a lower level," Carter said. "But now, I don't think the attention will wane."
Carter did go out of his way to praise Bush for his efforts to end in 2005 Sudan's other great conflict, the two-decade old civil war between the north and south.
"I urged Bush on his inauguration day to change policy and seek peace in Sudan," Carter said. "I disagree with Bush on just about everything else, but I give him credit for bringing peace in Sudan."
During his tour of Darfur, Carter got a taste of the Sudanese regime's interference with those seeking to help ethnic African civilians when a local state security official barred him from meeting a refugee delegate in the town of Kabkabiya in North Darfur, a stronghold of the pro-government janjaweed militias accused of the worst atrocities.
Carter later played down the incident, saying the Sudanese national security official had "only been doing his job."
"But it's true that I'm not accustomed to people telling me I can't walk down the street and meet people," Carter said after having returned to a United Nations compound in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
Most of the community leaders the mission met during its two-day visit to Darfur appeared to be government-vetted, and several ethnic African delegates told AP they had been intimidated by authorities into turning down invitations from the Elders.
The government denies it has indiscriminately retaliated against ethnic African civilians in the course of putting down the rebellion, but the International Criminal Court in The Hague has issued warrants against a Sudanese cabinet minister and a janjaweed chief on 52 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The Elders' visit came at a crucial time for Darfur, with a peacekeeping mission of 26,000 United Nations and African Union troops set to come in, and new peace talks between the government and rebels due to begin later this month.
On Sunday, 10 peacekeepers from the current AU force were slain when rebels overran their base in Haskanita, some 150 kilometers south east of El Fasher.
Gen. Martin Agwai, the AU troops' commander, told the Elders that the 7,000-strong force was ill-equipped to fight off the attackers. Agwai said it had also taken over 12 hours to evacuate injured peacekeepers from Haskanita because the AU currently doesn't have its own helicopters.
Tutu said it was "awful" that the AU had come to pacify a region nearly the size of France without the proper gear, funds or armament. The Elders vowed to push for countries to support to the new, hybrid U.N.-AU force due to take over on Jan. 1, and said they would draw up a list of advice for the new Darfur peace talks in neighboring Libya, which Carter anticipated would be "a very difficult process."
"These are important benchmarks ahead of us," Carter said, emphasizing that Sudan's most crucial next step was general elections across the country. The elections are due in 2009 according to a peace agreement signed between Sudan's government and rebels in the south of the country ending the long civil war.
Observers fear that delayed elections could lead to a breakdown in the peace agreement.
Carter, who turned 83 upon his arrival in Khartoum on Sunday, said he met with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who had committed to holding the elections on time and invited international observers from his foundation, the Carter Center, to monitor the vote.
Al-Bashir also announced Khartoum had committed US$100 million (€70 million) to a Darfur reconstruction fund, with China pledging another US$200 million (€140 million), Carter said.
Despite all the problems between northern and southern Sudan, Carter said he was convinced neither side was willing to go back to war.
"The elections are a crucial point, both for the stability of southern Sudan and the improvement of Darfur," he said.
The Carter Center has monitored 68 elections worldwide so far, and its founder said he was confident it could help make the vote a success throughout Sudan, even Darfur.
But he questioned the commitment of al-Bashir, who was brought to power in a military and Islamist coup in 1989. "When people have been in power for so long, and in an authoritarian regime like this one, they don't want to endanger their power," the former president said.
