EL FASHER (Sudan), July 23: Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir danced before supporters on a visit to Darfur on Wednesday that bristled with security, and dismissed accusations that he masterminded genocide in the region.

Travelling in a convoy, backed by a helicopter and soldiers, police and national security driving in vehicles mounted with machine guns, Beshir arrived in El Fasher, the old Darfur capital, greeted by 5,000 to 6,000 supporters.

Civil servants, tribesmen, students, men on camels and horses cheered the head of state, pledging allegiance and slamming a bid from the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for Beshir’s arrest over suspected war crimes.

School pupils were recruited for the rally and one government employee told AFP that staff were ordered to a disused land under the searing sun, where a grinning Beshir danced to nationalist music, jabbing the air with his stick.

His visit comes a week after ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo accused Beshir of instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and using rape to commit genocide.Members of those groups, the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, some of whom belonging to Beshir’s National Congress Party, also attended the reception.

Beshir’s regime is trying to persuade the UN Security Council to freeze possible legal proceedings should ICC judges actually issue an arrest warrant, on the grounds that it could jeopardise peace prospects.

“What Ocampo said about Darfur are lies... We have to find a solution to the Darfur crisis,” Beshir told around 300 people made homeless in the five-year conflict, who officials said were returning from El Fasher to their villages.

An Arab League official said Sudan had agreed to set up special courts to try alleged human rights abuses in Darfur which will be monitored by the United Nations, African Union and Arab League.

“They agreed to establish special courts,” Hisham Yussef, chief of staff for Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mussa, told AFP in Cairo. However, if Sudan holds viable trial of those accused of crimes in Darfur, the ICC automatically drops its charges.

Sudan has in the past promised to try alleged Darfur war crimes, but credible trials have failed to emerge.

The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003.

Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.

The war began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.

Beshir told the group of 600 people from camps in the El Fasher area that war had stymied development, not just in Darfur, but across Sudan and that his government was working hard for a solution to the crisis.

Top western and Arab diplomats, including US charge d’affaires Alberto Fernandez and British ambassador Rosalind Marsden, flew with him to Darfur.

Britain and the United States sit on the UN Security Council which can defer for one year, renewable, any ICC investigation or prosecution with a majority of nine votes, including the concurring votes of all five permanent members.

—AFP