ICC prosecutor to seek Darfur indictments in July

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Blaming Sudan's "entire state apparatus" for crimes in Darfur, the International Criminal Court prosecutor said on Thursday he would seek new indictments next month against senior Khartoum officials.

Judges at the ICC, set up in 2002 in The Hague as the world's first permanent court to try individuals for war crimes, issued arrest warrants for two Sudanese suspects in April last year, but Khartoum has refused to hand them over.

In an address to the U.N. Security Council, prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said Sudan was not cooperating with the ICC and was taking no action of its own against the two, government minister Ahmad Harun and militia commander Ali Kushayb.

Instead, he said, Sudanese officials had waged an "organized campaign ... to attack civilians" in Darfur, western Sudan, where at least 200,000 people are estimated to have died and 2.5 million displaced since a rebellion erupted in 2003.

"The evidence shows that the commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years, and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the entire Sudanese state apparatus," Moreno Ocampo said.

In a hard-hitting presentation, he compared what he said were attempts by Khartoum to cover up atrocities in Darfur with tactics employed by Nazi Germany, Bosnian Serb leaders in the 1990s and former military dictators in his native Argentina.

The prosecutor said that in July he would present ICC judges with evidence "on who are those most responsible for the crimes described."

Previous cases showed that the judges took between one and three months to decide on whether to issue indictments, he said.

Moreno Ocampo, who had announced in The Hague last week his intention to take action but without giving a timetable, did not name any officials whose indictment he would seek.

He is also investigating attacks by Darfur rebel groups against international peacekeepers but did not suggest he was ready to seek indictments in that case.

SUDAN WON'T COMPLY

Sudan has already reacted angrily to the prospect of further indictments. Its U.N. ambassador accused Moreno Ocampo on Wednesday of preparing a "fictitious and vicious case" that would wreck the peace process for Darfur, where the United Nations and African Union are deploying a peacekeeping force.

Speaking to journalists after Thursday's council meeting, Sudan's deputy permanent representative Akec Khoc repeated Khartoum's argument that it is not a party to the ICC and "cannot be compliant" with its decisions.

The only answer to Sudan's problems was through political dialogue, he said.

But the ICC says Sudan is bound by Security Council resolution 1593 of 2005, which demanded that Khartoum cooperate fully with the court.

Much of Moreno Ocampo's speech and a separate written report to the council dwelt on the atrocities he blamed on Sudanese officials in collaboration with the feared Janjaweed Arab militia.

"The entire Darfur region is a crime scene," he said.

Civilians were being killed, houses burnt or looted, markets and schools bombed, mosques destroyed, land usurped and girls as young as 5 or 6 years old raped with their parents forced to watch, his written report said.

"This is not an incidental by-product of war. It is a calculated crime, intended to do irreparable damage to communities," it said.

Moreno Ocampo called on the Security Council to "send a strong message" to Sudan by issuing a formal statement.

Costa Rica, a council member, circulated a draft statement demanding that Sudan arrest and surrender Harun, who is currently state minister of humanitarian affairs, and Kushayb to the court.

Diplomats said they did not expect the statement to be issued on Thursday.

(Editing by Mohammad Zargham)