The International Criminal Court has issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region. Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be charged with war crimes.

Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo: “The government of the Sudan is obliged under international law to execute the warrant of arrest on its territory. We are not calling for someone else to do it. If the government of the Sudan does not execute the warrant of arrest, the UN Security Council will need to ensure compliance.”

Sudan has dismissed the warrant as a Western ploy. At the UN, Sudanese Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem said his government rejects the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem: “We condemn strongly this verdict. And for us, ICC doesn’t exist. We are not bound by its decisions, and we are in no way going to cooperate with it.”

Abdelhaleem meanwhile said the mass killings in Darfur are largely the result of a local conflict over scarce resources.

Sudanese Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdelhaleem: “Regarding our conflict, we have a conflict. We recognize existence of the conflict. But it has been blown out of proportion. It is a conflict, traditional conflict, over meager resources, water, land, like many thousands conflicts in the various corners of the world, so we are not an exception. It has been blown out of proportion to serve the agenda and interest of certain countries.”

Western human rights groups praised the arrest warrant for Bashir. Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said Bashir is guilty of war crimes.

Richard Dicker: “Certainly, it’s a momentous day for the International Criminal Court and, more broadly, the cause of justice and ending impunity for the most serious crimes under law: the mass murder of civilians, the use of rape as a weapon of intimidation or war, the forcible displacement of whole populations on the basis of their ethnicity. So this is a significant, momentous day. And I would say the decision of the judges of the ICC that we heard this morning is really of seismic proportions.”

The Sudanese government has meanwhile carried through on warnings that an arrest warrant would further imperil Sudanese refugees. Within hours of the warrant’s announcement, Sudan expelled at least ten groups that provided aid to more than a million displaced people in western Darfur. The groups, including Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and CARE International, account for 60 percent of humanitarian assistance in Darfur.