Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir

Egypt's proposal for holding an international conference on the troubled Sudanese province of Darfur would be coordinated with the UN and the countries concerned, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said yesterday.

"After Arab foreign ministers welcomed the Egyptian proposal for an international conference (on Darfur), we will approach the UN Security Council's permanent members and the countries, which attended signing the 2006 Darfur peace treaty in Addis Ababa," Egypt's official Middle East News Agency (MENA) quoted Abul Gheit as saying. Abul Gheit had announced earlier yesterday that the Arab League resolution on Sudan's crisis with the International Criminal Court (ICC) beats the door open for diplomatic efforts aimed at heading off potential charges against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir of masterminding genocide in Darfur.Egypt's top diplomat said it was "necessary for the UN Security Council to assume its responsibility to save stability in Sudan," suggesting an appeal to the UN Security Council to intervene, according to MENA.The UN Security Council has the power to adopt a resolution requesting the ICC to suspend its procedures for 12 months.The pan-Arab organisation's chief Amr Moussa arrived in Khartoum yesterday for a meeting with Bashir to discuss with him the ICC decision and the Arab plan to resolve it.The 22-nation Arab League had issued a resolution Saturday in support of Sudan, slamming ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's request as "unbalanced," and demanding Sudanese courts to prosecute those accused of war crimes during Darfur's five-year conflict."(The Arab League) council decides to be in solidarity with the Republic of Sudan in confronting schemes that undermine its sovereignty, unity and stability. It declares non-acceptance of the unbalanced, non-objective position of the prosecutor general of the International Criminal Court," the Arab foreign ministers said in a statement following crisis talks in Cairo Saturday night.Moreno-Ocampo last week asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Bashir's arrest. If granted, it would be the first ever issued by the Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.Moreno-Ocampo accuses Bashir personally of instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and the use of rape to commit genocide.Moussa, the chief of the Arab League, declined to reveal details of the Arab plan before discussing it with Sudanese officials including Bashir. But the Arab League on Saturday called for alleged Darfur war criminals to face trials in Sudan that were not a "sham".Khartoum has consistently rejected the ICC's jurisdiction, saying it would try alleged war criminals in its own courts.According to the ICC's statutes, if credible trials of alleged war criminals are held domestically the court's own charges are dropped.The conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur broke out in 2003, when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum and state-backed militias.The United Nations has said 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced. Khartoum puts the number of dead at 10,000.