20100829
reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor has accused Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of abusing African hospitality and threatening the West as he seeks to avoid arrest on genocide charges.

Kenya chose not to arrest Bashir on the ICC charges when he visited the country on Friday for a ceremony marking the East African nation's new constitution.

The ICC, to which Kenya is signed up, accuses Bashir of war crimes and genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died in a humanitarian crisis resulting from a counter-insurgency campaign.

Bashir denies the charges, saying they are part of a Western conspiracy.

"President Bashir is fighting for his freedom using different tactcs," ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters in an interview on Saturday during a visit to London.

Those tactics included "abusing African hospitality" by going to neighbouring countries, "threatening Western countries with affecting the south (Sudan) and offering carrots to foreign business, to French, American and English companies," he said.

U.N. Security Council members should implement a strategy to counter Bashir's tactics, Moreno-Ocampo said.

South Sudan is widely expected to choose to split from the north in a January referendum after a 2005 peace accord ended a two-decade-long civil war -- separate from the Darfur violence.