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11 July, 2008
THE HAGUE (AFP) - International Criminal Court prosecutors will seek the arrest of Sudan President Omar al-Beshir for war crimes in Darfur, it emerged Friday, prompting Khartoum to threaten peace efforts in the region.
"I understand that the prosecutor intends to go before a panel of judges to present information and request for a warrant," US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington, confirming newspaper reports that Beshir would be targeted.
It would mark the first-ever bid before the independent court, based in The Hague, to charge a sitting head of state with war crimes.
The Sudanese government responded angrily to the news.
"If there is a decision about President Beshir, it may destroy the peace process," Sudan's state minister for foreign affairs Al-Samani al-Wasila told AFP.
"In this situation, Sudan will never co-operate with the ICC," he added.
ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's office announced Thursday that he would unveil a new case on Darfur and name suspects on Monday. It said the case would cover "crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years".
But a spokeswoman refused Friday to confirm that a warrant would be sought for Beshir.
"The prosecutor will make his announcement before a judge of the court on Monday, and we will not give details to the press until after," she said.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced since the Darfur conflict broke out in February 2003. The Sudanese government says 10,000 have been killed.
The conflict began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power.
The Washington Post said some UN officials feared the ICC prosecutor's move could complicate the peace process in Darfur and trigger a military response by Sudanese forces or their proxies against United Nations and African Union peacekeepers.
Sudan's UN ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad warned the newspaper of "grave repercussions" if Beshir was indicted.
"Ocampo is playing with fire," the ambassador said. "If the United Nations is serious about its engagement with Sudan, it should tell this man to suspend what he is doing with this so-called indictment."
On Tuesday, seven UN peacekeepers were killed and 22 were wounded in the ambush of a UN convoy in Darfur.
UN officials in Sudan said the Janjaweed -- state-backed Arab militia -- were suspected of carrying out the attack, while Sudan's government blamed the attack on rebels in Darfur.
According to the Washington Post, representatives of the UN Security Council's five permanent members -- China, Britain, the United States, France and Russia -- met UN officials Thursday on the safety of Darfur peacekeepers in the wake of the attack.
It said peacekeepers are being moved to safer areas, and that the UN is distributing food and equipment in preparation for a possible cut off of supplies to the force by Sudan's government.
"All bets are off; anything could happen," one UN official told the newspaper. "The mission is so fragile, it would not take much for the whole thing to come crashing down."
The UN force, UNAMID, is under-staff and ill-equipped, with only a third of its projected total of 19,500 soldiers and 6,500 police currently deployed.
Beshir's regime has refused to allow the deployment of Nepalese, Scandinavian and Thai soldiers and remains reluctant about any non-African troops reinforcing the mission.
Sudan rejects the ICC's jurisdiction and refuses to surrender two war crimes suspects already named.
Human Rights Watch said Beshir's possible arrest was "very exciting".
"For us this is what the institution was created for ... the fight against impunity" at the highest level, spokeswoman Geraldine Mattioli told journalists in The Hague.
Beshir could become only the third sitting president to be tried by an international court, behind the late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and Liberia's Charles Taylor.