While western media and politicians rail against inaction in the face of a human rights catastrophe in the region, Arab media and intellectuals express a very different view, based on ingrained suspicion of western motives. Many Arabs believe that talk of United Nations sanctions and military deployment to protect Sudanese civilians masks a new offensive against yet another Arab regime: "Sudan Next" in the words of an editorial in Egypt's state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper.

Hassan Abu Taleb, deputy director at the Al-Ahram centre for political and strategic studies in Cairo, said US failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had fuelled doubts about the west's credibility and broader motives in the Middle East. "The tendency is to see anything that comes from the US as a big lie. Some even doubt the [veracity of] catastrophic images of Darfur because they come from the western media," he said...

...Hossan Zaki, the league's spokesman, last week criticised the tough approach of the US and the European Union to the crisis, and threats of military deployment by Britain and Australia, saying they were "antagonising" Khartoum while "achieving little on the ground".

The league has been upstaged by Friday's UN Security Council resolution threatening the Sudan government with diplomatic and economic "measures" amounting to sanctions if they fail to disarm the militias, known as Janjaweed.

On his return from a visit to Darfur, Aboul Gheit, Egypt's foreign minister, appeared on Sunday to refute the UN's evidence of widespread atrocities. "To talk about grave violations of human rights or massacres or other such accusations, I don't think it is that way," he said...

...But if there was mounting concern within the Arab world about events on the ground in Darfur, where Muslims have fought, killed and raped fellow Muslims, it now appears subsumed by even greater popular alarm that the west might intervene.