President Omar Al-Bashir said in an interview published Thursday he will never deal with or appear before the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor has indicted him on charges of genocide and war crimes in Sudan's remote Darfur region. Al-Bashir's comments to the Khartoum independent Al-Ayyam daily were his first to directly address the July 14 indictment and how he planned to deal with it. He said a team of Sudanese legal experts will challenge the indictment's legality and the evidence it contains before the U.N. Security Council and the International Court of Justice. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has also asked the Hague-based court for an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir, but it may be weeks before a ruling is made on the request. Sudan has in the past consistently rejected the ICC's jurisdiction on the grounds it is not a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statue that set up the court. Last year, it refused to hand over two Sudanese nationals indicted on charges of crimes against humanity. But this is the first time an indictment was issued by the ICC against a sitting head of state. Al-Bashir's government has been looking into ways to deal with the indictment. “The government will never deal with the court. It doesn't recognize it, and will not appear before it,” Al
