Sudan won't seek delay of president's prosecution

Sudan is dropping its campaign to have the United Nations Security Council delay prosecution of President Omar al-Bashir and instead will demand that the "criminal plot against our country" be stopped, Sudan's U.N. envoy said.

At Sudan's urging, the African Union and the Arab League had lobbied the 15 members of the Security Council to delay for a year the arrest of al-Bashir if the International Criminal Court issued a warrant so that U.N. and AU efforts to bring an end to the six-year conflict in Darfur could continue without disruption.

But when court issued an arrest warrant Wednesday for al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed told a news conference the government decided to abandon its effort to seek a delay.

Richard Dicker, head of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, said the Security Council's veto-wielding permanent members are deeply divided on whether to delay the warrant. He said the United States, Britain and France are opposed and China, which buys two-thirds of Sudan's oil, and Russia are likely in favor.

Sudan sees that there "is not sufficient support to implement a deferral," Dicker said. "This is dead in its tracks at the moment."

African and Arab nations fear the warrant against al-Bashir will destabilize the whole region, bring even more conflict to Darfur and threaten the fragile 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan.

But the U.S., France and Britain made clear they would not support a delay. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told The Associated Press on Wednesday that "the United States supports the ICC action to hold accountable those who are responsible for the heinous crimes in Darfur."

Sudan's Mohamed accused the U.S., Britain and France of using the International Criminal Court "to destabilize" Sudan and dominate the country.

"They are targeting among other things our wealth, our oil, our land and our new political importance - no doubt about that," he said at the news conference.

China on Thursday echoed the Sudanese envoy, urging the court to drop the warrant.

"China opposes anything that could disrupt efforts to realize peace in Darfur and in Sudan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang in a statement posted Thursday to the ministry's official Web site.