I am not sure now that Muslim terrorists carried out these attacks. There is evidence that the attacks were staged.

If they can make Avatar, they can make anything.

Meanwhile Hugo Chávez has accused the United States of America of using the recent earthquake in Haiti as an excuse to invade the latter country:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed Wednesday that the United States is using the devastating quake that hit Haiti last week to occupy the Caribbean nation.

‘The United States government is using a humanitarian tragedy to militarily occupy Haiti. I read somewhere that they even occupied the government palace,’ Chavez complained as he launched a cable car system for poor neighbourhoods in Caracas.

The left-wing populist Venezuelan, an outspoken critic of US policies, said the United States should be sending more doctors and medicine than soldiers.

‘Cuba has more doctors in Haiti than the United States,’ he said.

Chávez is not alone. Other pseudo-Leftist representatives have made similar claims. Associated Press reports:

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua — all three led by anti-US governments — claimed Washington was using the international relief operation in Haiti as cover for a military takeover.

R2P is certainly not—to judge by a careful reading of its history—a mere ploy by rich and powerful countries to poke their noses into the affairs of small nations. Its origins are somewhat more interesting.

One of the first international bodies to endorse the concept, or a version of it, was the African Union, which emerged from the discredited Organisation of African Unity. The AU’s Constitutive Act included a provision for “the right of the Union to intervene in a member state pursuant to a decision of the [AU] assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.” It cited a new principle of “non-indifference” to large-scale crimes.

One of R2P’s keenest sponsors was Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian who preceded Mr Ban as secretary-general. Mr Annan has agonised in public about the UN’s failure in Rwanda, when he was head of un peacekeeping, and has argued that his success as a peace-broker in Kenya last year owed something to the existence of R2P as a moral instrument.

Meanwhile, America, far from dreaming up R2P as a crafty way of justifying imperialist adventures, was initially rather sceptical. Under the Bush administration, both the Pentagon and the State Department were intensely wary of signing up to anything that might bind them to take draconian action in the name of humanity.

Indeed, R2P was a part of a much broader 2005 reform of the United Nations that George Bush first sought to weaken, then only reluctantly accepted. And to this day, there are voices on America’s political right that remain profoundly sceptical about the idea of costly pledges to wage wars in the name of protecting people from inhumanity.

In September 2005, Survivors Susan Pollack (Holocaust), Beatha Uwazaninka (Rwanda) and Kemal Pervanic (Omarska, Bosnia) travelling to Islamabad, New Delhi and New York to lobby for international commitment to the "responsibility to protect".

One year on, they will address Sunday’s demonstration outside Sudanese Embassy and open an exhibition about Darfur, calling on World leaders to honour their promises. They will be joined by survivors from Darfur, including Ismail Jarbo, who in 2003 saw his father killed during a Government attack.

"After the Holocaust, the World said ‘never again’ but genocide has happened again and again," says Susan Pollack. "A year ago I travelled to New Delhi to help send the message that ‘never again’ would mean nothing until world leaders accepted their responsibility to protect people at risk of mass murder. They did so; now they must honour their word for the people of Darfur."

"Darfur’s Africans are being murdered. How can we leave them without protection?" says Kemal Pervanic. "I ask people everywhere; remember how Bosnia suffered and end the bloodshed in Darfur now. You don’t have to be a politician to take up the responsibility to protect. Just start to make your voice heard. The World’s leaders have to know we care."

"The Janjaweed and the Army are ready to finish the job they started," says Ismail Jarbo. "For the sake of my people, do whatever it takes to ensure UN protection. Protect them today, because tomorrow is too late."

Kigali: vigil at site of massacre which followed UN Pull-out

On Sunday 17 September, hundreds of Rwandan genocide survivors will march from a school where 2,000 Tutsis took refuge in 1994 to the site, several miles away, where they were massacred after UN peacekeepers protecting them pulled out. Their march will call on the World not to abandon Darfur to its fate today in the way that they were abandoned twelve years ago.

As the Belgian troops drove out of the Ecole Technique Officiele (ETO) on 11 April 1994, Hutu militia waiting at the gates walked in. The Belgians at ETO had little firepower and no back-up. They were ordered to leave. And yet it was obvious that their withdrawal would be followed by a bloodbath. The survivors draw chilling parallels with Darfur today.

"When I think of the people in Darfur today, it makes me sick to the stomach because I know what it’s like to watch your protectors walk away and I know the fear of waiting for help that never comes," says survivor and rally organiser Freddy Umutanguha, Coordinator for Aegis Rwanda. "We survivors stand with the victims in Darfur. We are not here to tell the World’s politicians how to do their job. All we say is: if you don’t protect the people of Darfur today, you will have failed to do it, and never again will we believe you when you visit Rwanda’s mass graves, look us in the eye and say ‘never again’."

Donning blue berets as part of the ‘Global Day for Darfur’ call for UN protection in Darfur, the survivors will also wear T-shirts bearing the words, "I Survived Genocide in Rwanda. Stop Genocide in Darfur."

ENDS

For more information, contact Media Officer David Brown, +44 (0)1623 836627, +44(0)7812 640873, david.brown