On Sunday, the Save Darfur coalition will hold a mass rally in Washington to focus public outrage on the genocide in Darfur.

Over the past three years, Sudanese militias, aided by the government, have caused the deaths of up to 400,000 African Muslims in the Darfur region in western Sudan. They sent an additional 2.5 million fleeing to refugee camps. The rally's organizers, a broad umbrella of religious and human-rights groups, hope a huge turnout will galvanize the White House to work harder to stop the slaughter.

After all, President Bush pledged in February to push for a United Nations (not U.S.) peacekeeping force, helped with logistics by NATO. This would replace an inadequate African Union force that has been unable to protect civilians in Darfur.

But, although the Sunday rally will be large, it appears the numbers won't be sufficient to make a truly powerful statement — unless more demonstrators travel to Washington at the last minute. (For rally details, see www.savedarfur.org or www .genocideintervention.net.)

One has to ask: Why is there so little public passion about the massive Darfur killing? Have people become convinced they can do nothing about genocide in far-off countries?

If so, they are wrong.

After the Rwandan slaughter of 800,000 in 1994, there seemed to be strong public sentiment against permitting another such slaughter. President Bush reportedly wrote in the margins of a study on Rwanda: "Not on my watch."

The movie "Hotel Rwanda," a true story about a hotel manager in Kigali who saved 1,200 guests from death by machete, gave Americans a graphic portrait of the Rwandan tragedy. Don Cheadle was nominated for an academy award for his role as the hotelier, Paul Rusesabagina, who proved that one man can make a difference.

So it was depressing to hear the real Rusesabagina speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia about his January 2005 trip to Darfur. "What we didn't learn in Rwanda, we didn't learn in Darfur," he said bluntly. He recalled that, while flying back from Darfur, he watched a TV broadcast of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of Auschwitz. "How many times shall we keep lying 'never again'?" he asked.

Yet Rusesabagina, who lived through hell while the United Nations and the world did nothing, is going to the Darfur rally. Despite his well-earned cynicism about the international community and the United Nations, he feels he must take a stand against genocide.

Significantly, his recent autobiography is titled "An Ordinary Man." Perhaps this "ordinary man" realizes that a strong public showing at the Save Darfur demo will encourage the Bush administration to push harder at the Security Council for a U.N. protection force in Darfur.

Maybe Rusesabagina also knows that there is still something that can be done — even three years on — to prevent more killing. The key is to shame recalcitrant members of the U.N. Security Council into approving a robust force for Darfur that can prevent more rapes and murders of children. The force could be made up of troops from Muslim countries, but it will need NATO logistical support.

There are three main obstacles to setting up such a force:

First, the African Union is resisting a handover to the United Nations because it doesn't want its own observer force to be labeled a failure. U.S. officials could propose the inclusion of African troops — while reminding the A.U. that without expanding their numbers they will assuredly fail.

Second, Sudan is also resisting, backed up by Arab countries that charge that U.S. efforts to save Darfur civilians are really an imperialist plot to seize Mideast oil.

Osama bin Laden just echoed this argument in his latest tape. Our Arab allies should be asked if they endorse bin Laden in justifying Darfurian deaths by such nonsense. Whatever America's mistakes in Iraq, they provide no justification for permitting a genocide of Muslims in Darfur.

Finally, Russia and China have threatened to veto a resolution calling for a U.N. force. China does a brisk business selling arms to and buying oil from Sudan. But there was an encouraging signal Tuesday that Moscow and Beijing aren't impervious to pressure.

Both countries abstained on a Security Council resolution that sanctioned four Sudanese men heavily implicated in the killing. This was first time that anyone was punished for the Darfur madness. Kudos to John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for pushing the resolution through.

Getting Russia, China and Arab states to back U.N. peacekeepers will be much tougher. Perhaps the blunt Bolton can organize a photo display of dead Darfurian children in Security Council chambers to shame its members into compliance.

A strong turnout at Sunday's demonstration would strengthen Bolton's hand and give the White House more incentive to press the Darfur issue. Paul Rusesabagina will be there. He knows the value of a stand by an ordinary man.