UN should press for Darfur arrests-ICC prosecutor

AMSTERDAM, Aug 31 (Reuters) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should press Sudan to arrest and hand over two suspects charged with war crimes in Darfur when he visits Khartoum next week, the chief prosecutor said today.

''They cannot dismiss what we investigated and proved,'' Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal court based in The Hague, told Reuters.

The UN Security Council asked the ICC in 2005 to investigate atrocities in Darfur. In February, Moreno-Ocampo issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Harun, a former state minister of interior, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader, for mass executions, rapes and forcible evictions of thousands of people.

Sudan has refused to hand them over.

''Executing the warrant is not in our hands, that's why with the secretary-general, I said to him the need to execute the warrants and include this in discussions with the Sudanese government,'' said Moreno-Ocampo, who met Ban in New York this week.

Moreno-Ocampo, an Argentine charged with prosecuting war crimes at the ICC since 2003, renewed his call for action as Ban heads on a six-day trip to Sudan, Chad and Libya next week to smooth the way for an international peacekeeping force being assembled to bring order to western Sudan.

International experts estimate 200,000 people have died with 2.5 million driven from their homes to makeshift camps in Darfur and in neighbouring Chad since the conflict in Sudan's arid west began in early 2003.

Sudan's non-Arab farmers accuse the Khartoum government of arming militia, known as Janjaweed, in response to a rebellion by ethnic African rebels, which the government denies.

Moreno-Ocampo said the arrest warrants, and the reasons why they were issued, ''cannot be ignored.'' ''The person who committed the crimes is today in charge of humanitarian affairs,'' Moreno-Ocampo said of Harun, who is currently Sudan's minister of state for humanitarian affairs.

''It's like a joke, a tragic joke,'' Moreno-Ocampo said.

Ali Kushayb, also known as Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, is a senior Janjaweed and is wanted for his involvement in attacks in West Darfur in 2003 and 2004.

Moreno-Ocampo also stressed that justice should be on the agenda of a major international conference on Darfur scheduled to be held in New York next month.

''They cannot deny this issue of justice,'' Moreno-Ocampo said. ''We need a consistent approach.'' Sudan agreed in July to the dispatch of a 26,000-strong joint UN-African Union force of troops and police to replace 7,000 existing AU peacekeepers who have been unable to cope.

REUTERS RS KP2115