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ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — The African Union on Monday asked the UN Security Council to delay a decision by the International Criminal Court on whether to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on war crimes charges.

“The African Union requests the UN Security Council to defer the process initiated by the ICC, taking into account the need to ensure that the ongoing peace process is not jeopardised,” Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe told reporters.

“We are asking for a delay within the rules of the Rome Statute,” he said at the end of AU’s Peace and Security Council meeting in Addis Ababa.

The UN Security Council can pass a resolution to defer for a period of 12 months any investigation or prosecution by the ICC and the delay may be renewed by the council under the same conditions.

“The AU invites the (AU) commission to take all necessary steps for the establishment, within the period of 30 days of this meeting, for a high-level panel made up of distinguished Africans to examine the situation,” Maduekwe added.

“We urge the Sudanese government to take immediate steps in investigating human rights violations in Darfur,” he said.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo accuses Beshir of personally instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and the use of rape to commit genocide.

Last week, Moreno-Ocampo asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Beshir’s arrest. If granted, which could take several months, it would be the first issued by The Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.

Arab League ministers have rejected the court’s move and on Sunday the group’s Secretary-General, Amr Mussa, held talks with Beshir in an attempt to stall possible war crimes charges.

In Nairobi, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki warned any bid to put Beshir on trial would prove counter-productive.

Kibaki said international efforts would be better expended on seeking a lasting solution to the violence in Darfur, rather than bringing Beshir before courts “that may not have an understanding of the conflict.”

“Any isolationist policy against the sitting government of Sudan will be counter-productive,” Kibaki said in a statement released after talks here with Beshir’s special envoy, Bonal Malual.

Sudan Justice Minister Abdel Basit Sabdarat welcomed the AU position adding that Khartoum will never be intimidated and was capable of prosecuting crimes itself.

“Sudan does condone impunity and we would prosecute crimes of all sorts. Sudan is not governed by the law of the jungle, it is a responsible state with an independent judicial system,” he told the council.

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.

It 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.

According to the ICC statute, if credible trials of alleged war criminals are held domestically the court’s own charges are dropped.

Sudan’s two other ICC indictees, current cabinet minister Ahmed Harun and Arab militia leader Ali Kosheib, had both been set to face trial in Sudanese courts on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Kosheib’s trial was indefinitely suspended in March 2007. Harun was briefly detained and released last October for lack of evidence.

Sudanese diplomatic efforts now focus on persuading the UN Security Council to freeze any prosecution of Beshir for 12 months, renewable, warning that peace prospects would be severely undermined.