An estimated 20,000 people rallied in Central Park yesterday on behalf of the people of Darfur, Sudan.

Wearing T-shirts and berets in U.N. blue, the demonstrators waved signs carrying slogans such as: “Protect the People — U.N. Peacekeepers for Darfur.” They were out in support of the victims of what President Bush has called “genocide.”

A secretary of state under President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, headlined the event. “The climate of terror must end,” Ms. Albright said. “The world has to act and must do so now. This is not about trying to impose Western values on Sudan. Protecting people is a universal value.”

While speaking for the most part on behalf of a United Nations mission to deploy peacekeepers to the troubled region, Ms. Albright garnered the most applause for her jabs at the Bush administration. “There are other things going on in the world than Iraq,” Ms. Albright said. “People are more important than oil.”

“We need the people of China and the people of Russia to stop supporting the killers,” a representative of the Darfur Peace and Development Corporation, Omer Ismail, said. Russia and China reportedly have been reluctant to approve a peacekeeping force measure in the Security Council, where each holds a veto.

“I would like to tell the people of the Arab League who are supporting the killers that we will never trust you again,” Mr. Ismail added.

In the crowd, a Darfur native, Badari Tajedin, 40, held a sign reading: “U.N. Protect Darfur, not Bashir,” referring to the president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir. Mr. Tajedin said the problem in Darfur is not religious or racial, but a campaign of cultural extermination. “The janjaweed militia is those who speak the Arabic language against those who do not,” Mr. Tajedin said. “It’s 100% the project of the Islamist government in Khartoum to Arabize Darfur.”

With him was Amira Tibin, 36, also of Darfur. She said the janjaweed burned her home village of Dar Zagawa to the ground, and her brother went missing in the fighting. “The only thing that will help our people is international protection,” Ms. Tibin said. “I don’t care if it’s U.S. or U.N. The African Union troops, all they do is sit in offices. The A.U. is a partner of President Bashir.”

She accused President Bashir of spreading a rumor in Sudan that if the U.N. comes, people will get AIDS.

Rep. Christopher Smith, a Republican of New Jersey, traveled to Darfur and met with Mr. Bashir. “All he cared about was ending the American sanctions,” Mr. Smith said.

“The people of Darfur deserve better and are counting on us,” he said. “No one can ever say we didn’t know.”