SUDAN: US Congressmen arrested at New York embassy

Five member of Congress were willingly arrested and led away from the Sudanese Embassy in plastic handcuffs Friday after protesting the Sudanese government`s alleged role in atrocities in the Darfur region.

"The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end," Representative Tom Lantos (news, bio, voting record) (D-Calif.), a Holocaust survivor who founded the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said from the embassy steps before his arrest.

Four other Democratic Congress members - James McGovern and John Olver of Massachusetts, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and Jim Moran of Virginia - were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, a misdemeanour subject to a fine.

"We must hold the Sudanese government accountable for the attacks they have supported on their own citizens in Darfur," Olver said.

Dozens of demonstrators carried signs, some reading Stop the slaughter, and Women of Darfur suffer multiple gang rapes.

The protesters cheered as the Congress members and others were cuffed, hands behind their backs, with plastic ties and quietly led to a white police van by uniformed officers of the U.S. Secret Service.

The arrests were expected. Lantos` office issued a news release about them in advance.

The protesters called on the Sudanese government to accept a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur and allow humanitarian relief organizations full access to victims.

The three-year-old conflict between rebels and government-backed militias has left at least 180,000 people dead, mostly from war-related hunger and disease. Some two million people have been driven from their homes.

Rallies against the violence in Darfur were planned for more than a dozen U.S. cities this weekend, including on Washington`s National Mall on Sunday.