A new report from the Foreign Policy Centre highlights the most tragic irony of last year's Iraq war.

While world leaders focused all their attention on clearing up the post-war mess, a humanitarian catastrophe was looming in Darfur, which subsequently led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people.

The FPC report says there were indications of an unfolding disaster as early as September 2003 but Iraq-obsessed diplomats and politicians failed to take sufficiently robust action to stop the killing in Sudan.