Court To Issue Bashir Warrant Ruling On March 4

Bashir, the most senior figure pursued by the court since it was set up in 2002, dismisses the allegations and refuses to deal with the ICC.

The International Criminal Court is expected to announce next month it will issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur.

Bashir, the most senior figure pursued by the court since it was set up in 2002, dismisses the allegations and refuses to deal with the ICC, calling it part of a Western conspiracy.

The court said on Monday it would announce its decision whether to issue a warrant for Bashir's arrest on March 4. Earlier this month, U.N. diplomats and officials told Reuters the ICC had decided to go ahead and issue an arrest warrant.

The court's chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested the warrant for Bashir last July, making him the third sitting head of state to be charged by an international court following Liberia's Charles Taylor and Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic.

The court said it had decided to give notice of the date of the announcement as there "have been numerous rumours over the past weeks on a possible date and outcome of the decision".

Ocampo accuses Bashir of orchestrating a campaign of genocide in Sudan's western region of Darfur, starting in 2003. Ocampo has said 35,000 people were killed outright and at least 100,000 more through starvation and disease.

Khartoum rejects the term genocide and says 10,000 people died in the conflict.

A commander of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said he expected the ICC to announce the arrest warrant and his movement wanted to assist in the arrest of Bashir to help the international community avoid "suffering casualties".

"We support the ICC in issuing an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president for his crimes against humanity in Darfur. we now ask the ICC and the Security Council to delegate JEM to arrest Omar al-Bashir," Suleiman Sandal told Reuters.

"We have the ability to reach Khartoum and Omdurman, as you have seen," he said, referring to the group's attack on the Sudanese capital and its suburb last May. "It would be easy to arrest him."

China, the African Union and the Arab League have all suggested that an indictment of Bashir could destabilise the region, worsen the Darfur conflict and threaten a troubled peace deal between north Sudan and the semi-autonomous south.