Dave Eggers and Tom Stoppard have joined the chorus of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, politicians, sportspeople and artists calling on China to help bring peace to Darfur in Sudan's western region.

The American author/publisher and English playwright cosigned a letter to Independent newspaper arguing that as ‘the primary economic, military and political partner of the government of Sudan … China has both the opportunity and the responsibility to contribute to a just peace in Darfur.’

‘Ongoing failure to rise to this responsibility amounts, in our view, to support for a government that continues to carry out atrocities against its own people,’ the writers said.

This article from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker