Nobel laureates press China over Darfur

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urging the Beijing Games host to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing its ally Sudan to stop atrocities in Darfur.

"As the primary economic, military and political partner of the Government of Sudan, and as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur," said the letter.

"Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people," said the letter, released on a day of events by the Save Darfur Coalition.

The letter was signed by Nobel Peace laureates Bishop Carlos Belo, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchu, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and Jody Williams. Other signatories included politicians, Olympic medallists and entertainers.

U.S. actress Mia Farrow, who has spearheaded the coalition's global campaign to press China to change its policies in Sudan, gathered a crowd outside the Chinese mission to the United Nations in New York as she tried to deliver the letter.

"China hopes that these games will be its post-Tiananmen Square coming out party. But how can Beijing host the Olympic Games at home and underwrite genocide in Darfur?" she said, and stuffed the letter under the mission door after her knocks went unanswered.

In more than four years of conflict in Sudan's western region of Darfur, 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes, according to estimates from international experts. Khartoum says 9,000 people have died.

"HIGHER CALLING OF HUMANITY"