Sudan Dismisses Bashir Arrest Move

Sudan's ambassador to the UN has vowed his country will not co-operate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) amid reports it has issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president.

His comments came after an unnamed diplomat at the UN told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday that the ICC had "decided it wants [al-Bashir] arrested".

The New York Times newspaper also earlier reported prosecutors had evidence that al-Bashir had committed war crimes in the country's conflict-ridden Darfur region.

But Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, Sudan's envoy to the UN, told Al Jazeera any arrest warrant against al-Bashir "means nothing to us".

"We are not going to be surprised if this decision is issued today or tomorrow or if it has already been issued," he said.

"Because we know this court is a political court, a politically motivated decision, it will never bother us at all. It means nothing to us. We are in no way going to co-operate with this decision."

'Co-operation' call

ICC prosecutors said last year that they had evidence that al-Bashir had committed war crimes, but the precise charges against the president have not been disclosed.

It would be the first time the ICC has sought the detention of a sitting head of state since it was established in 2002.

Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey reported the UN secretary-general's office had said it had not been notified of any ICC decision and declined to comment.

But Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, had on Tuesday urged the Sudanese leader to co-operate with the ICC if a warrant is issued.

"He [Bashir] should fully co-operate with whatever decisions the ICC makes," Ban told reporters at the UN headquarters.

Peace negotiations

But Abdalhaleem dismissed the ICC as a "hostage to the political will of some powers on the [UN] Security Council".

"If the secretary-general wants us to believe that the court is independent, then he should stop becoming its spokesperson," he said.

Reports of the arrest warrant came on the same day that the Sudanese government and the opposition Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) met in Qatar.

Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the JEM, and Nafie Ali Nafie, the head of a Sudanese government delegation, held face-to-face talks in Doha, the Qatari capital, marking the first peace negotiations between the group and Khartoum since 2007.

'Genocide campaign'

The talks, which are under the auspices of Qatar, the United Nations and the African Union, will continue on Thursday.

Last year Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief ICC prosecutor, asked the court's judges to indict al-Bashir for orchestrating what he described as a "campaign of genocide" in Sudan's western Darfur region in which 35,000 people were killed in 2003 alone.

UN officials say at least 2.5 million were left homeless and have put the death toll as high as 300,000.

Sudan has rejected the use of the term genocide and said 10,000 people died.

The Sudanese government has said that it would continue co-operating with UN peacekeepers in the country even if al-Bashir is indicted, but has warned there may be widespread demonstrations of public outrage.