Speak up on Darfur suspects, prosecutor tells UN

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Thursday challenged the United Nations and its members to break their silence on two men he charged with war crimes in Darfur.

A day before Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presides over a meeting of 26 nations involved in bringing peace to Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo said too little attention had been paid to his arrest warrants, an issue not on the agenda of the talks.

He charged a Sudanese official and a pro-government militia leader, but Sudan refuses to arrest them.

"I am concerned that the silence by most states and international organizations on the subject of the arrest warrants has been understood in Khartoum as a weakening of international resolve," Moreno-Ocampo told a news conference.

"It is time to break the silence," he said.

Sudan reacted sharply to his comments, accusing the prosecutor of deliberately sabotaging the peace process.

Ban, who needs Khartoum's cooperation to get a peacekeeping force into Darfur and start cease-fire talks, said he had spoken to Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir about the suspects during his recent trip to Khartoum.

But he would not disclose what was discussed and U.N. sources said he did not brief Moreno-Ocampo afterwards.

The Hague-based ICC in May charged Ahmad Harun with organizing a system to fund and arm militias against rebels attacking the Sudanese army. The militias then wiped out villages and are now fighting each other over the spoils. Harun is currently the minister of state for humanitarian affairs.

The court also issued an arrest warrant for pro-government militia leader Ali Mohammed Ali Abdalrahman, also known as Ali Kushayb, who like Harun was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Some 200,000 people are estimated to have died and more than 2 million driven into squalid camps since the conflict broke out four years ago.

PEACE TALKS IN LIBYA

Sudan has said the charges against Harun were false. But Moreno-Ocampo said Harun was responsible for forcing millions out of their homes and now is controlling security and access to food in the camps.

"Justice in Darfur must be on the agenda, at the top of the agenda," the prosecutor said because there could be "no political solution, no security solution, no humanitarian solution as long as Ahmad Harun remains free in the Sudan."

"As peace talks and negotiations for the deployment of the hybrid force advance, there is a resurgence of violence around the camp," Moreno-Ocampo said. "I have reasons to believe that it is an operation in which Ahmad Harun plays a key role."

But Sudan's U.N. Ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, characterized Moreno-Ocampo as a man with a mission "to destroy the peace process," especially talks between rebels and the government scheduled for October 27 in Tripoli, Libya.

"Rather than mobilizing all resources and energies to ensure the success of that meeting, he came now to New York to play the same political game assigned to him by the enemies of peace in the Sudan, which is to destabilize the country and to spoil the peace process," the ambassador said.

Abdalhaleem said nations should stop him because Moreno-Ocampo was trying to influence Friday's Darfur meeting.

"Mr. Ocampo is a member of the orchestra that is playing a melody that would definitely entertain some people here in this organization, but the casualty would be peace, stability and security of the country," he said.

The ICC is the first permanent global criminal tribunal to try individuals for world's most heinous crimes that national government would not or could not prosecute. It began functioning four years ago and has moved slowly, with seven arrest warrants issued: four for Uganda's notorious Lord's Resistance Army, one Congolese and the two Sudanese.

((Editing by Cynthia Osterman; Reuters messaging: Evelyn.Leopold.reuters.com@reuters.net; 1-212-355-7424)