US:THE CHIEF prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant on Monday for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charging him with genocide and crimes against humanity in the orchestration of a campaign of violence that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the nation's Darfur region during the past five years, according to UN officials and diplomats.
International organisations in Sudan yesterday tightened security, fearing a violent backlash.
The action by the prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, will mark the first time that the tribunal in The Hague has charged a sitting head of state with such crimes, and represents a major step by the court to implicate the highest levels of the Sudanese government for the atrocities in Darfur.
Some UN officials raised concerns that the decision would complicate the peace process in Darfur, possibly triggering a military response by Sudanese forces or proxies against the nearly 10,000 UN and African Union peacekeepers located there. At least seven peacekeepers were killed and 22 were injured on Tuesday during an ambush by an unidentified armed group.
Representatives from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and US - met UN officials on Thursday to discuss the safety of peacekeepers, and UN military planners have begun moving them to safer locations.
"All bets are off; anything could happen," said one UN official, adding that circumstantial evidence showed that the government of Sudan orchestrated this week's ambush.
Sudan's UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said that rebels are responsible for the attack on UN peacekeepers. However, he warned that the announcement of charges against Bashir or other senior officials would "destroy" international efforts to reach a peace settlement in Darfur.
Moreno-Ocampo's office said in a statement that the prosecutor will "summarise the evidence, the crimes and name individual(s) charged" at a news conference on Monday in The Hague.
The ICC does not issue formal indictments, but simply presents its charges to the pretrial chamber and asks it to issue an arrest warrant for a suspect. Moreno-Ocampo has charged at least 11 people since 2004 and the pretrial chamber has never refused a request for an arrest warrant. The violence in Darfur began in February 2003 when two rebel groups attacked Sudan's Islamic government, claiming a pattern of bias against the region's black African tribes. Khartoum organised a local Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, and conducted a brutal counterinsurgency campaign that has left more than 300,000 people dead and driven more than two million from their homes.
Officials familiar with Moreno-Ocampo's investigation said Bashir is unlikely to surrender to the ICC anytime soon. The leader has refused to release to the court two other Sudanese nationals indicted in April 2007, even appointing one of them, Ahmed Haroun, to oversee international peacekeepers and humanitarian relief efforts.