DARFUR UPDATE: I don’t actually trust them to do this, but I suppose it’s still progress of a sort:

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan pledged Saturday to disarm Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, who have driven more than one million Africans from their homes in west Sudan’s Darfur region and to accept human rights monitors in the area. . . .

Long conflict between nomadic Arab tribes and African farmers over scarce resources in Darfur intensified when a revolt broke out last year. Rebels accuse Khartoum of arming the Arab Janjaweed, a charge the government denies.

The United States raised the possibility Friday of sanctions against Sudan if the government did not stop the militia attacks in Darfur.

You get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone. . . .

UPDATE: James Moore observes the (necessary?) hypocrisy involved in diplomacy:

Now here is the irony. The Sudanese government has argued all along that it is not guilty of driving the atrocities and that it has no direct control over the janjaweeds. But if the Sudanese government’s claims are true, this same government will not be able to reign in the raiders and comply with its deal with Powell.

Powell most certainly believes that the Sudanese government does control the militias and is driving the genocide. And this assumption, in turn, is central to his current strategy—even while the same assumption is disavowed in his public statements.

Indeed.