Darfur crisis 'graver than Middle East' - Annan

United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan urged the global body’s human rights watchdog today to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impartially and said it was time to focus attention on ”graver” crises such as Darfur.

Annan’s statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, came only a day after the 47-nation body rejected an attempt to hold the Sudanese government responsible for halting atrocities in its volatile Western region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others displaced since the Darfur conflict began in 2003.