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The chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court has told the United Nations Security Council he plans to seek new indictments against Sudanese officials linked to the conflict in Darfur.
Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Security Council Thursday that the entire Darfur region is "a crime scene," where rapes, attacks on schools, and seizures of land regularly occur. He said such things could only occur on such a broad scale with the compliance of the government.
He did not name the new officials he intends to prosecute.
Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, told a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation in Khartoum that his country will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court.
He also told council members that Sudan is the subject of an unfair and ill-intentioned campaign from some quarters, bent on exploiting the crisis in Darfur.
President Bashir also told the council that a crisis between the country's north and south over the contested oil region of Abyei would soon be resolved through dialogue.
In another development Thursday, the U.N. and A.U. envoys to Darfur say prospects for substantive peace talks on the Darfur crisis are not good. The diplomats failed to get peace negotiations between Sudan's government and Darfur rebels re-started during a two-day meeting in Geneva.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged Sudan Thursday to cooperate with the International Criminal Court over its indictments of Darfur war crimes suspects. The court issued arrest warrants for two crime suspects more than a year ago. Sudan has refused to hand over the two men.
Darfur has been mired in five years of conflict between rebels, the Sudanese government and government-backed militias. The United Nations says the conflict has displaced some 2 1/2 million people and killed up to 300,000 others. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.
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