Marie-Arlette Carlotti (PSE). – (FR) Mr President, everyone is saying: ‘Darfur is on the brink of the abyss’. The parties involved in the conflict continue to kill and to rape. The civilian populations are their daily targets. Humanitarian workers are abandoning the area under the pressure of the acts of intimidation and, indeed, murders, since 13 have been killed over the last few weeks. The conflict is threatening the entire sub-region, extending, as it does, to Chad and to the Central African Republic. It seems that all is now set for the final assault. All is set for a massacre. The government is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the international community. It is a very cruel game that is paid for each day in hundreds of human lives.

Since 2004, the Union has spared no financial efforts, and this commitment has certainly helped to prevent carnage. However, a firmer political commitment is now vital. The priority is to act as quickly as possible and to deploy, in accordance with Resolution 1706, a United Nations peacekeeping force with a mandate to use force if necessary to protect the civilians.

However, the only way to protect the populations is to do so quickly, here and now - by forcing the Sudanese authorities to stop their current offensive and to apply the peace agreement to Darfur; by strengthening the mandate and by giving the material resources to the African Union forces that are on the ground and that, at the moment, do not constitute a solid enough shield to protect the civilian populations; and, as my fellow Members have said, by immediately introducing the no-fly zone provided for in United Nations Resolution 1591. Furthermore, if appeals to reason are not enough, well, let us clear the way for sanctions: an oil embargo, an international arrest warrant, and individually targeted sanctions against the perpetrators of atrocities and, in particular, against the 51 people whose names appear on the list passed on to the International Criminal Court. Ladies and gentlemen, this Parliament will not allow the first genocide of the 21st century to take place, in silence and practically in front of its very own eyes.