We've received several e-mails from readers who say President Barack Obama isn't keeping his promise for rapid action on ending genocide in Darfur.

Since Obama took office, he has taken some actions to halt genocide in the Darfur region of the country of Sudan. On March 18, he appointed retired Air Force Major Gen. J. Scott Gration as his special envoy and ordered up a new policy review for the region. Raised in Africa and fluent in Swahili, Gration was an early adviser to the Obama campaign on national security issues, and traveled with Obama to Kenya in 2006.

Since being named envoy, Gration has gone on three major overseas trips. He visited Sudan, traveling to Darfur, Juba, Abyei and the capital of Khartoum. He also did a tour of Sudan's regional neighbors, visiting Doha, Qatar; Cairo, Egypt; and N"Djamena, Chad. Finally, he visited London, Paris and Beijing. Gration will attend a major conference next week aimed at maintaining peace between warring factions within Sudan.

The readers who e-mailed us, though, are impatient. Gration's language in negotiating with Sudan has been too accommodating, they say. The policy review has still not been made public, even though it has been in the works for several months. And Obama hasn't used the bully pulpit to personally talk enough about Darfur.

The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes on March 4. Bashir responded by kicking out humanitarian groups that were offering aid to about 2.5 million refugees inside Sudan. Those groups are starting to re-enter the country, but progress has been slow.

We asked Alex Meixner, the senior director of policy and government relations of the Save Darfur Coalition, an advocacy group that promotes peace and stability in Darfur, if he thought Obama was shirking his promise by not taking decisive enough action on Darfur.

"The tough thing here is this," Meixner said. "Obama and the Unites States don't have the power unilaterally to make everything better. Almost all the tactics that will build toward a solution require multilateral action."

Meixner praised Gration for working long hours and traveling so much. The peace conference next week is important, and the policy review will be another significant marker, he said.

Meixner said he would be watching for depth and scope in the policy review, particularly how it lays out both carrots and sticks for dealing with the regime in Khartoum. The Obama administration needs to get other countries to join in a credible threat of economic sanctions against the Sudanese government, he said. Getting the international community on the same page in terms of messages to Sudan would be another good step.

If Obama introduces the policy review personally, that would also be a good sign, Meixner said. If it's introduced by a low-level State Department official at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday, not so much.

"It will be apparent if there is a full effort or not," he said.

As for the genocide, Meixner said that mass killings have stopped for the time being. But the government is still trying to keep people in refugee camps so it can repopulate abandoned villages with its supporters, and intermittent violence and rapes continue to be reported.

Gration, the envoy to Darfur, addressed the concerns about Darfur during a State Department news conference on June 17 by reiterating the goals of the Obama administration: "We want to make sure that this situation is stabilized, and so we"re taking efforts to make sure that the humanitarian assistance is there, that we"re able to facilitate and help coordinate a cease-fire, an end of hostilities, and then we want to make sure that there"s political processes in place in Darfur and these other places, so the will of the people can be brought and so that they can have democratic principles and mechanisms."

Obama's last remarks on Darfur himself were when a reporter questioned him on the matter in Germany on June 5, 2009.

Obama said the United States had been working "diligently" to get humanitarian groups back into Darfur and mentioned its efforts on peace conference between the Khartoum government and rebel groups. "So we've been very active on this issue," Obama said. "It may not have received the attention in the press that some of the other issues have, but we are spending a lot of time trying to make sure that we make progress and that the people of Darfur are able to return to their homes and live in peace."

We understand readers' concerns that Obama's promise was for swift action in Darfur. But it seems to us that the administration is still moving toward fulfilling the promise. Gration's work, while not universally praised, appears to be ongoing and substantive. So for now, we leave this promise In the Works.