Genocide charges not a threat to Sudan's leader

Buoyed by support from the Arab and African world, Sudan's president showed no signs of giving in to pressure Tuesday after an international prosecutor sought his arrest for war crimes in Darfur.

Omar al-Bashir has emerged tarnished but apparently unbowed from the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court charging him with orchestrating a campaign that the U.N. says has killed 300,000 people and driven 2.5 million from their homes in Sudan's western region.

"This regime is not in crisis," said Mahjoub Mohammed Saleh, a respected analyst and co-founder of the independent newspaper al-Ayam.

Life flowed normally in the capital one day after prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked the Netherlands-based court to issue a warrant for al-Bashir's arrest. There were no mass protests or any hint of hasty evacuations by foreigners, U.N. officials or aid workers.

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur announced it was temporarily relocating nonessential personnel to neighboring countries, but there were no figures immediately available on how many.

Khartoum's tranquility was broken only by a few hundred vocal al-Bashir supporters who rallied outside his palace.

Later in the day, a hundred or so lawyers protested outside the French Embassy. Al-Bashir's government portrays France, the United States and Britain as the driving forces in what it describes as a campaign to destabilize Sudan.

Many Sudanese and even the United Nations, analysts say, want to see the president stay in power to revive faltering peace negotiations with Darfur rebels and to make good on his promise to hold what could be Sudan's freest and fairest elections in decades next year.

A soldier turned politician, al-Bashir signed a new and progressive election law Monday that many in Sudan view as a turning point in the country's march toward genuine democracy. The law sets aside 25 percent of parliament seats for women and allows foreign experts to monitor the vote, slated for the fall of 2009.

Al-Bashir's position may even have been bolstered by the genocide charges, which led some countries to criticize the international tribunal.

The Arab League, which is to hold an emergency session Saturday to discuss the charges, offered support to al-Bashir, as did Egypt's government.

The league's envoy to Sudan, Salah Halima, described the indictment as a serious blow to peace efforts in Darfur and said it would further undermine stability in a region beset by internal and cross-border conflicts.

He added that "there are countries with political agendas that target Sudan."

Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, telephoned al-Bashir to express support while his Foreign Ministry called the indictment "a grave and unacceptable interference in Sudan's internal affairs and in the affairs of all Islamic and Arab countries."

Tanzania, the current chairman of the African Union, also criticized the prosecutor's decision to seek an arrest warrant, saying the move will harm peace efforts in Darfur, which has been wracked by fighting and atrocities since an uprising early in 2003.

But the most powerful support came from China, a major purchaser of Sudan's oil that said the charges could destabilize the region. A spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Lieu Jianchao, said that "China expresses great concern and worry."

Al-Bashir also enjoys considerable domestic support for reviving Sudan.

A dour, balding man in his 60s, al-Bashir rose to power in a 1989 military coup that toppled a democratically elected but inept government. Already the longest serving head of state since independence in 1956, he represents a kind of continuity that Sudan did not see during decades of coups and attempted coups.

He took over at a time when southern rebels were closing in on Sudan's north, parts of Khartoum went for days without electricity or water, drivers lined up at service stations from the pre-dawn darkness for a few gallons and the country suffered hyperinflation.

Al-Bashir ordered one military offensive after another against rebel-held areas in southern Sudan before a 2005 peace deal ended more than two decades of fighting. Sudan struck oil, and gasoline lines became a thing of the past.

Basic items like sugar, once available only with foreign currency at duty-free shops in the 1980s, are now plentiful at the grocery stores that have sprung up in recent years.

"The indictment targets the symbol of our sovereignty at a time when Sudan is enjoying unprecedented economic prosperity and political progress," said Fathi Khalil, a prominent member of al-Bashir's ruling National Congress Party.