AMSTERDAM — The Cabinet confirmed on Friday it will abolish work permits for highly-skilled expats from 1 October this year.

From that date, expats who earn a gross wage of EUR 45,000 or more per year will no longer require a work permit in the Netherlands and will be issued with a five-ear residence permit.

But the cabinet wants to prevent prostitutes from availing of the system, yielding to demands laid down by the Dutch Parliament, the government website regering.nl said.

As prostitutes moving to the Netherlands could also satisfy the income requirement, they could in principle be classified as skilled migrants. The parliament said this was undesirable as prostitution is not a normal career, despite the fact it is legal.

In an unofficial but very formal poll taken in my freshman writing class the other day, George Bush beat John Kerry by a vote of 13 to 2 (14 to 2, if you count me). My students were not voting on the candidates' ideas. They were voting on the skill (or lack of skill) displayed in the presentation of those ideas.

If you can't explain an idea or a policy plainly in one or two sentences, it's not yours; and if it's not yours, no one you speak to will be persuaded of it, or even know what it is, or (and this is the real point) know what you are.

Q Mr. President, how important is it that that resolution give you an authorization of the use of force?

THE PRESIDENT: That will be part of the resolution, the authorization to use force. If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. But it's -- this will be -- this is a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, we support the administration's ability to keep the peace. That's what this is all about.

U.S.: No 'Quick Fixes' in Sudan Situation

It may take up to two years to disarm the Arab militia in the Darfur region of western Sudan and secure the vast region for the return of 1.2 million people who fled the violence there, a senior U.S. diplomat said Friday.

There are no "30-day, 90-day quick fixes" to the problem, said Charles Snyder, the State Department's Senior Representative on Sudan. "This is going to take, in my view, 18 months to two years to conclude the first phase" of making the region safe for people to return to their homes.

The United States will eventually act on Darfur. After the election President Bush or President Kerry will not sit by and permit the second genocide in Africa in a decade. We will intervene -- belatedly. The question is how belatedly, and how effectively.

"My friends, today we are better off, you are better off and the world is better off without Saddam Hussein"

-- Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, speaking to Congress

NEWSWEEK: You are wanted by the Americans.

AL-JANABI: Even during Saddam’s time I was tortured and prevented from preaching. If you say the truth, you will become an outlaw and wanted. Saddam was unjust and the Americans are also unjust. That is why I am wanted (by the Americans).

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. You've answered some of Senator Kerry's criticisms in the last couple days about your Iraq policy. A couple of Republicans have raised some questions, as well, in the last couple days. Senator Hagel said that, "sharp analysis of our policies is required. We didn't do that in Vietnam, to the point where we finally lost." Senator McCain, you're not being "as straight as we would want him to be," about the situation in Iraq. What do you say to them?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Both Senators you quoted strongly want me elected as President. We agree that the world is better off with Saddam Hussein sitting in a prison cell. And that stands in stark contrast to the statement my opponent made yesterday ...

"I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died."

... Swaggart said he has jokingly used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people. He said the expression is figurative and not meant to harm.

"It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God — it's ridiculous," Swaggart told the Associated Press. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology."

Congressional negotiators beat back efforts yesterday to expand and preserve tax refunds for poor families, even as they added $13 billion in corporate tax breaks to a package of middle-class tax cuts that could come to a vote in the Senate today.

The House-Senate negotiations concluded last night with the approval of a five-year $146 billion tax cut, the fourth tax cut in as many years. By the end of this week, Republican leaders expect to pass extensions of three tax cuts primarily aimed at middle-income taxpayers -- a $1,000-per-child tax credit, tax breaks for married couples and a 10 percent income-tax bracket that was expanded last year.

But the fight over the child tax refunds during the negotiations revealed a split among GOP tax writers.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) sided with Democratic leaders in pushing for changes in the child tax credit to ensure that millions of poor families would not see their credits shrink or disappear next year.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) opposed the move, as did Sens. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.). That effectively scuttled changes to existing law.

Despite Bush Flip-Flops, Kerry Gets Label

SIEGEL: You say [Bush] should be faulted for what he's done and therefore not re-elected.

Sen. KERRY: My critique is about almost everything the president has done with respect to Iraq. From day one he rushed to war without a plan to win the peace. He did not give the inspectors the opportunity to finish their work at the UN, which could have brought other countries to our side. He didn't go to war as a last resort, which is what he said. When the Congress voted, he said that war was not inevitable. He said they would do careful planning. He said they would go with allies. He did none of the above. He didn't do careful planning. He discarded the plans of the State Department themselves and didn't even follow them.

This president has made the wrong choices each step of the way because he hitched his wagon to the ideologues of his administration and turned his back on the good advice of people like Senator Lugar, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, other people who said all of this was foreseeable. Now I can't tell you what I will inherit on January 20th. I did tell the president what he ought to do today, and that's what's important.

SIEGEL: In your speech at NYU on Monday, you faulted the president for saying that knowing everything he knows now, he would do everything in Iraq just as he did. What's the difference between what the president says and what you say, as you said in August that knowing everything you know now, you still would have voted to give him the authority to do what he did in Iraq?

Sen. KERRY: But that's different. That is different. The authority is the authority to do the inspections. The authority is the authority to build an alliance. The authority was necessary because it was the only way to make inspections happen, so that you could hold Saddam Hussein accountable. But giving the authority did not start the war. The president started the war. The president made the choice of when to go to war. We also gave him the authority not to go to war.

Now my plan would have been very different. If I knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, if I knew that there was no imminent threat, if we knew that there was no connection to al-Qaeda, all of which have now been proven true, there's no way I would do things the same way or go forward with a war. The president has said he would. Now that is a choice in this election that is about as clear as night and day. The president says he'd go do the whole thing all over again. I clearly say under no circumstances, without an imminent threat and a connection to al-Qaeda and WMD, would I do so.

Hundreds of soldiers have been deployed on the streets of Nigeria's oil city of Port Harcourt, residents said, following reports up to 500 people killed in clashes in the past month.

A woman was killed Wednesday when a nearly 7-foot-tall metal crucifix fell on her head in a small town in southern Italy, police said.

Maddalena Camillo, 72, was walking in the main square in the village of Sant'Onofrio when the crucifix toppled from a monument being restored for a religious celebration, police said.

Reporter: "Why do you think the CIA's assessment of conditions in Iraq are so much at odds with the optimism that you and Prime Minister Allawi are expressing at the moment?"

President Bush: "The CIA laid out a -- several scenarios that said, life could be lousy, like could be okay, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like ..."

President Bush: "... The Iraqi citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions. The Iraqi citizens are headed toward free elections ... And I am optimistic we'll succeed."

A recent CIA assessment of Iraq warns the security situation will worsen across the country, not just in Baghdad but in the north and south as well, a senior administration source told CNN Tuesday.

The report is a much more dire and ominous assessment of the situation than has previously been forwarded through official channels ... It was sent to Washington Monday by the CIA station chief in Iraq.

It was not immediately clear if the assessment was what prompted the hastily arranged trip to Washington by Iraq civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer, who met Tuesday at the White House with President Bush and senior national security officials.

... The senior administration source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Bremer agreed with the CIA assessment and added his personal comments to the station chief's memo.

The overarching objective is to protect and defend democracy and freedom. Within that, one is to defend democracy and freedom around the world against brutal dictatorships like that of Saddam Hussein and terrorist actors. And the connection between them is of great concern to him.

Second is to preserve relations among the great powers who are industrialized nations and even those that aren't democracies.

And three, to extend the zone of democracy around the world.

You do kind of have to wonder how every person that ran Tom DeLay's Texas fundraising machine seems to be guilty of crimes that DeLay himself is innocent of. How does he keep his fingernails so clean?

Peter Cloeren Jr.. who owns a $40 million-a-year plastics business in Orange County, Texas, DeLay's home state, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission charging that DeLay had encouraged him in 1996 to use contribution swaps and questionable conduits to evade limits on his donations to Brian Babin, a Republican Congressional candidate. Six weeks before Cloeren complained to the FEC, he had pleaded guilty to misdemeanor violations for using employees to disguise $37,000 in contributions to Babin. Cloeren was sentenced to two years' probation and 100 hours of community service; he and his firm were fined $400,000.

Cloeren, a campaign finance novice in 1996, takes responsibility for his misdeeds, but he maintains he was urged by Babin to concoct this illegal -- though not uncommon -- scheme. Moreover, the employee pass-through was only one plot of several Cloeren asserts, and Delay guided him to the others.

Here's Cloeren's story. In August 1996 he attended a private luncheon at a local country club, where Babin, DeLay, a DeLay aide named Robert Mills, several Cloeren employees and Babin campaign staffers were present. Cloeren told DeLay he had run out of "vehicles" for contributing to Babin. No problem, DeLay responded; "additional vehicles" could be found. DeLay noted that other Congressional campaigns and a political outfit called Triad could serve as "vehicles." He told Cloeren that Mills would provide further details.

A day or two later, says Cloeren, Mills called and spelled out the specifics: If Cloeren would contribute to other Republicans -- Senator Strom Thurmond in South Carolina and Steve Gill, a Congressional challenger in Tennessee -- contributors to those campaigns would cut checks to Babin. Mills also said that Cloeren could make a donation to groups that would then pass the same amount to Babin. Cloeren says he was then contacted by Carolyn Malenick, head of Triad Management Services, who told him that if he and his wife contributed $20,000 to Citizens for Reform (a nonprofit managed by Triad), the money would be used to help Babin's campaign. Cloeren says Babin also asked him to send $5,000 to the Citizens United Victory Fund, a political action committee that would forward $5,000 to Babin's campaign. Cloeren made these donations.

Under federal law, an individual is allowed to give only $1,000 per election to a Congressional candidate. But in a variety of ways, Cloeren says, he slipped nearly $60,000 to Babin.

"People are sick, they are homeless and they are dying," said Martin. "We should have intervened last June when Canada called for it. We should be intervening now."

[edit]

"Our intervention should depend upon the human tragedy that is occurring, not on some legal definition."

At this hour, the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide. The United States played a key role in efforts to broker a cease-fire, and we're providing humanitarian assistance to the Sudanese people. Rwanda and Nigeria have deployed forces in Sudan to help improve security so aid can be delivered. The Security Council adopted a new resolution that supports an expanded African Union force to help prevent further bloodshed, and urges the government of Sudan to stop flights by military aircraft in Darfur. We congratulate the members of the Council on this timely and necessary action. I call on the government of Sudan to honor the cease-fire it signed, and to stop the killing in Darfur.

Scalia Bemoans Supreme Court's Increasingly Political Role

One recent Zogby survey, for example, showed that voters with passports supported Kerry over Bush by a margin of 55 to 33 percent.

[snip]

It's easy to see why the Bush administration might be worried about the prospect of huge numbers of American civilians living abroad exercising their right to vote. In efforts to register Americans living overseas, the official has come across a host of people who say they're signing up specifically to hasten Bush's defeat. "I've had so many old people coming to register say, 'I haven't voted in such a long time,' or 'The last time I voted in an election was when Kennedy ran, but we've got to get rid of this man. This man makes me ashamed to be an American.'"

A Travis County grand jury today returned 32 indictments related to Republican political fund-raising activity in 2002, including charges against three top aides to U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The grand jury returned indictments against DeLay political aide Jim Ellis and fund-raiser Warren RoBold and John Colyandro, who was executive director of DeLay's political action committee Texans for a Republican Majority. Colyandro faces 14 charges, RoBold was named in nine charges, and Ellis was named in one.

Colyandro and Ellis were indicted once each on a charge of felony money laundering.

They are accused of taking $190,000 in corporate money raised by the political action committee and giving it to the Republican National State Elections Committee. That committee in turn gave a like amount of legal donations to seven Texas House candidates.

We know this male diva likes attention (if he could sleep in the spotlight, he would), but this quadruple bypass thing is quite a ways to go to get it — even for Bill Clinton. Given his famously addictive personality, and after the outpouring of love and well-wishing, I just hope that he doesn't turn into one of those surgery addicts.

If it all sounds too satirical, consider this from the AP: "Doctors said Clinton's problems were not as sudden as had been portrayed. He had suffered shortness of breath and tightness in his chest for several months." ... In other words, my opening joke wasn't far off the mark: The man did risk his life for attention!

RUSSERT: "... Mr. Thune, you said in 1996 you would not vote for any other tax cuts until the budget is balanced. Is that your position still?"

THUNE: "I don't believe that we're in an environment today, because of the war, because of 9/11, because of the stock market collapse, the recession, that we're going to be in a position to get the budget balanced overnight. It's going to take some time. At that point in time, we did and when I got to Congress I voted for legislation that would balance the budget and cut taxes at the same time."

RUSSERT: "But you will vote to extend the president's tax cuts, at a cost of about a trillion dollars even though we have a $422 billion budget deficit."

THUNE: "The record of history is very plain ... that when you reduce taxes on people in this country, they spend, they invest, they grow the economy, they create jobs and that's what's going to happen with this. We are going to generate additional revenue as this economy continues to grow. We have set out a path for growth. We are on that path and we need to continue on that path."

RUSSERT: "Let me show you, Mr. Thune, what the Argus Leader (newspaper) says about [your] ad and this debate. 'Since October 1st, 1995, the 4.3-cent tax per gallon has gone to the U.S. Highway Trust Fund, which finances road projects. South Dakota is a donee state and receives about $2 in project money for every dollar paid in gas taxes. In the past, Thune also has expressed concern about a gas tax repeal, questioning the loss to state roadways.' And yet you're on the air now with a commercial and you question Senator Daschle's judgment. You say, 'When he got a chance to lower gas taxes, he voted against that, too.' Are you saying that you would vote to repeal the gasoline tax, even though it would mean highway money for South Dakota?"

THUNE: "Well, I don't think that's the point here at all. The point is, first off, Tom's ad is false on two counts ..."

RUSSERT: "But I'm asking you, when you say he got a chance to lower gas taxes, he voted against that, too. Will you introduce legislation to repeal the gasoline tax or lower it, even though it means less highway money for South Dakota? Will you, John Thune, do that as a senator?"

THUNE: "Not if it means less highway money for South Dakota."

RUSSERT: "So then why are you criticizing him for ..."

THUNE: "I am criticizing Tom's record not on energy generally but on taxes as well. And the energy tax is one component part of it ..."

NBC's Tim Russert: Having not found the weapons of mass destruction, and seeing the level of insurgency we're confronting, knowing what you know now, would you have still voted to authorize the president to go to war?

Senator Daschle: Tim, I stand by my vote. We can't roll back the clock. We can't turn it back. We've got to go from here. We've got to look at how we can win this war. We've got to provide our troops more equipment. We've got to listen to our military commanders. We've got to have better intelligence. We've got to make sure we involve the international community in burden sharing a lot more than we are. That's the kind of way we're going to do better at this war in the future.

"... Mr. Kerry has struggled to convince his audiences that his vote to authorize the president to use military force was a far, far cry from voting for a declaration of war. So far, his aides and advisers concede, he has failed to get his message across ..."

More than two-thirds of Illinois voters would choose Democrat Barack Obama over Republican Alan Keyes for U.S. Senate, according to a new poll.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll released Monday shows Obama leading the race with 68 percent to Keyes' 23 percent.

"What should be done is an outright intervention," he said. "When I compare it to Rwanda, there are so many similarities it makes you sick."

Khartoum, he said, is "getting away with slaughter and genocide," while the world reacts, much as it did then, with embargos and restrictions.

But two decades of competition for scarce resources amid a state-sponsored, divide-and-rule policy of "Arabization" have eroded these religious bonds while sharpening ethnic tensions. The violence, now fueled partly by an Arab sense of being superior Muslims, underscores the racial hatred and the obstacles to reconciliation.

THE Frauenkirche, a baroque, domed cathedral that once dominated Dresden’s skyline, was flattened by Allied bombing in the second world war. The reconstruction of the cathedral, begun around the time of Germany’s reunification in 1990, is now nearing completion. Saxony, the eastern state of which Dresden is the capital, hopes the new cathedral will symbolise the state’s economic and cultural revival. But sadly the Frauenkirche is not the only remnant of Germany’s past now enjoying a recovery of its fortunes. On Sunday September 19th, the National Democratic Party (NPD), which the German government has compared with the Nazis, attracted 9.2% of the vote in Saxony’s regional elections—the first time the party has won seats in any state assembly since 1968.

In the neighbouring state of Brandenburg, another far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), also won seats in the regional parliament. But in Brandenburg, the show was stolen by throwbacks to the communist era, not the fascists who came before them. The Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), composed mostly of former communists, won 28% of the vote, establishing itself in second place behind Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s party, the Social Democrats (SPD). Only a pact between the SPD and the Christian Democrats (CDU) will deny the ex-communists a share of power in this region that turned its back on state socialism 15 years ago.

Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918,
And they've hardly bothered us since then.

A Roman Catholic priest accused of ordering the slaughter of 2,000 people who sought refuge in his church during Rwanda's genocide refused to appear for the start of his trial at a U.N. tribunal Monday.

Rev. Athanase Seromba did not attend in protest against U.N. plans to transfer the trials of some genocide suspects from the Tanzania-based tribunal to Rwanda.

[edit]

The suspects oppose the transfer of trials because they fear for their security in Rwanda and don't believe they'll get fair trials there.

Prosecutors say Seromba — then parish priest in Nyange, in Rwanda's eastern Kibuye Province — organized the slaughter of 2,000 people who fled to the church to escape killings by the extremist Interahamwe militia, the army and neighbors.

Prosecutors allege Seromba, a Hutu, ordered the Hutu militia to kill the Tutsis who sought shelter in his church.

"The ... militia attacked with traditional arms and poured fuel through the roof of the church, while gendarmes and communal police launched grenades and killed the refugees," the indictment said.

Seromba then ordered the demolition of the church to kill survivors, prosecutors said.

The church was bulldozed and its roof collapsed, killing more than 2,000 Tutsis gathered inside. The few survivors were killed by the Interahamwe.

Seromba then ordered the Interahamwe to clean the "rubbish," after which the victims were dumped into mass graves, prosecutors said.

The region around Seromba's church was home to some 6,000 Tutsis before the genocide, but almost all were killed in the slaughter.

For those who, like John Kerry, believe that the proper foreign-policy course in Iraq and elsewhere is to turn everything over to the United Nations, events of the past week provided some highly dubious fodder:

First, despite Colin Powell's correct description of the killings of African Muslims in the Darfur region of Sudan as "genocide," the U.N. did not leap into action.

The Weinberger Doctrine was first made public by U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger (in a speech) on November 28, 1984. ... The proximate cause for the speech was the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks at Beirut airport on October 23, 1983 ... This ill-fated U.S. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon had been undertaken despite the vigorous opposition of the secretary of defense ...

... In view of the United States' reluctance to commit troops to Bosnia or Rwanda ... there is no doubt that the logic behind the principles of the Weinberger Doctrine is still very much in place.

The Weinberger-Powell doctrine emphasized criteria ... that did not fit the relatively undefined nature of peacekeeping operations under the control of the United Nations.

First he wanted free-trade, then he wanted tariffs, then did not.

He wasn't into nation building, 'til he started building nations like Iraq.

He was against campaign finance reform, but then he turned and signed it into law.

[edit]

He said "I won't negotiate with nuclear Korea”, then he did.

Said the 911 commission shouldn’t happen, before getting down with it.

He didn’t want Homeland Security, and then said the department worked for him.

[edit]

Said he’d extend the assault gun ban, but then he got down low and tried to block.

He was for fingerprinting immigrants before he met with Presidente Fox.

Said he wouldn’t spend the social security surplus, but then spent every buck.

In "Rwanda," Don Cheadle gives a career-making performance as the hotel manager [Paul Rusesabagina], a reluctant hero who keeps the Tutsis in his hotel to protect them from slaughter by Hutu extremists until the refugees can be evacuated. Joaquin Phoenix plays a journalist, and Nick Nolte is head of U.N. peacekeeping forces.

The film adds a human dimension to a story that has been underreported by the Western media. Hotel Rwanda arrives in U.S. theaters on Dec. 25, prime timing for awards season.

ONE NATION UNDER GOD.

Bush-Cheney '04

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it ... The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

"The liberal agenda includes removing 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance," [the GOP mailer] says.

"Do you think Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was DIRECTLY involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, or not?"

Was: 42%

Was Not: 44%

Unsure: 14%

Laurence Braun learned the hard way that being acquitted of a crime doesn't always stop you from being punished for it.

Mr. Braun, former co-owner of a New York company that defrauded the U.S. Postal Service, was convicted by a New York federal jury in 2002 of racketeering and conspiracy. Had he been punished just for these crimes, he probably would have gotten around 2-1/2 years in prison.

But the federal judge who sentenced Mr. Braun also decided he should serve time for many of the 23 counts of which he was acquitted, calling it "relevant conduct." This last-minute add-on -- called an enhancement -- doubled Mr. Braun's prison sentence to five years.

"The government gets two bites at the apple," says Thomas C. Goldstein, a Washington, D.C., litigator. "Prosecutors can put stuff before a jury and if they're unsuccessful because the evidence is tossed or the jury acquits, they can ask the judge to find the very same wrongdoing at sentencing."

Visiting [interim Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi at his sprawling residence is a short course in just how bad the situation has become for anybody associated with the American purpose in Iraq.

To reach the house is to navigate a fantastical obstacle course of checkpoints, with Iraqi police cars and Humvees parked athwart a zigzag course through relays of concrete barriers. An hour or more is taken up with body searches and sniffing by dogs, while American soldiers man turreted machine guns. A boxlike infrared imaging device can detect the body heat of anybody approaching through a neighboring playground.

The final security ring is manned by C.I.A.-trained guards from Iraqi Kurdistan. If Dr. Allawi were Ian Fleming's Dr. No, no more elaborate defenses could be conceived. This is the man who has been chosen to lead Iraq to the haven of a democratic future, but he is sealed off about as completely as he could be from ordinary Iraqis, in the virtual certainty that insurgents will kill him if they ever get a clear shot.

... here's one point that I don't think has been made enough. Who is ultimately responsible for the security of Iraqis? Surely the coalition (emphasis added). Yet, even while we try hard to train a new Iraqi army and police force, it is indisputable that we've failed to protect innocent Iraqis from grotesque and mounting violence.

The United Nations Security Council has passed a resolution that threatens "to consider" oil sanctions on Sudan if the government does not act to end the violence in the country's troubled Darfur region.

Declares that the Council, in the event the Government of Sudan fails to comply fully with resolution 1556 (2004) or this resolution, including, as determined by the Council after consultations with the African Union, failure to cooperate fully with the expansion and extension of the African Union monitoring mission in Darfur, shall consider taking additional measures as contemplated in Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations, such as actions to affect Sudan’s petroleum sector and the Government of Sudan or individual members of the Government of Sudan, in order to take effective action to obtain such full compliance or full cooperation

Demands that the Government of Sudan fulfil its commitments to disarm the Janjaweed militias and apprehend and bring to justice Janjaweed leaders and their associates who have incited and carried out human rights and international humanitarian law violations and other atrocities, and further requests the Secretary-General to report in 30 days, and monthly thereafter, to the Council on the progress or lack thereof by the Government of Sudan on this matter and expresses its intention to consider further actions, including measures as provided for in Article 41 of the Charter of the United Nations on the Government of Sudan, in the event of non-compliance

In a fiery tirade, parliament speaker Ibrahim Ahmed al-Taher warned Western nations not to intervene.

"If Iraq opened for the West one gate of hell, we will open seven such gates," Taher was quoted as saying by the Sudanese Media Center, an information outlet affiliated to the government. "We will not surrender this country to anybody."