UN asked to press Sudan to arrest Darfur suspects

UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (Reuters) The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal court asked the UN Security Council to put pressure on Sudan because of its refusal to hand over two suspects charged with war crimes.

The ICC issued arrest warrants in February for Ahmad Harun, a former state minister of interior, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader, charged with mass executions, rapes and forcible evictions of thousands of people.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said yesterday global pressure was needed to make Khartoum turn over the two men. The Council asked the ICC in 2005 to investigate atrocities in Darfur.

Belgium's UN Ambassador Johan Verbeke, this month's council president, said several members would address the issue of arrests during a council visit to Khartoum on June 17.

''For Belgium, the fight against impunity is part and parcel for peace and security in Sudan,'' Verbeke said. Both he and US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the 2005 Security Council resolution made it mandatory for Sudan to comply.

France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said that the Security Council had to tell ''authorities in Khartoum they must cooperate.'' Arrests, however, will not be easy. Khartoum has said several times the suspects would not be handed over for trial and no army would go into Sudan to arrest them.

But Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentine in office at the Hague-based court since 2003, said the two men were stigmatized and Interpol had their names if they left Sudan.

''Sudan has to cooperate. It's the law,'' he said. ''It may take two months, it may take two years, but it is their fate.'' The ICC, based on the principles of the Nazi war crime trials at the end of World War Two, would try individuals for mass murders, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The usually low-keyed prosecutor detailed the enormity of the alleged crimes and the difficulty of investigations.

VICTIMS IN HIS HANDS Harun, now minister of state for humanitarian affairs, is accused of coordinating army, police and intelligence in Darfur in 2003 and 2004. With his new job, ''these people who were victims are in his hands,'' Moreno-Ocampo said.

''I have eyewitnesses who saw Ahmad Harun delivering weapons in his own helicopter to the militia in three different states in Darfur,'' Moreno-Ocampo said. ''I have eyewitnesses who saw him inciting the militia to commit crimes, to dilute the population.'' As for Kushayb, also known as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, the prosecutor said eyewitnesses saw him riding around on a horse giving instructions.

''I have eyewitnesses watching Kushayb involved in the execution of prisoners, in the rape of women,'' he said.

The conflict began in early 2003 with non-Arab farmers accusing the Khartoum government of favoritism. The government is accused of arming militia, known as Janjaweed, in response to the rebellion, who then killed, raped and plundered.

In the past year clans, rebels and militia from all sides have begun to fight each other. International experts estimate 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million have been uprooted in Darfur, though Sudan puts the death toll much lower -- at about 9,000.

The ICC is the first permanent global criminal court, whose statutes are ratified by 104 countries but opposed by the Bush administration.

Still, the United States allowed the Security Council to order the ICC probe into Sudan by abstaining. Khalilzad told reporters Sudan was ''under obligation by UN Security Council resolutions to cooperate and stop the violence there.'' REUTERS JK PM0655