SUDAN - July 28 - Sudanese Rally Behind Leader.

Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been accused by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court of genocide and vilified the world over as an incorrigible mass murderer bent on slaughtering his own people. But inside Sudan, his grip on power seeto be surer than ever. In the past few weeks, one sworn political enemy after another has closed ranks behind the Sudanese president, criticizing the looming arrest warrant from the international court as an obstacle to peace and an affront to Sudanese sovereignty. The result has been a swift and radical reordering of the fractious political universe in Sudan, driven in part by national pride but also by deep-seated fears that if Bashir were removed by outside interference, Sudan could easily tumble into Somalia-like chaos. The government seeto be in a high-stakes high-wire act, trying to determine exactly how much it needs to concede to survive. One previously unthinkable proposal that is now being discussed is whether the government should arrest Ahmad Muhammad Harun, the former interior minister, and Ali Kushayb, a militia leader. The men already face arrest warrants issued by the international court for crimes against humanity in Darfur, but the government has refused to turn them over. Officials here have said that putting the two men on trial in Sudan might be a way to persuade the United Nations Security Council to suspend the case against Bashir. "Everything short of the presidency is on the table", said Sudan's FM, Deng Alor, a senior member of a former rebel group that is now part of the government. The West has been relentlessly focused on Darfur. But here in Sudan, most people view the crisis as simply a continuation of a long chain of internal conflicts between an autocratic government and the deeply impoverished people on the periphery. Sudan has been at war with itself for almost its entire post-colonial history. Nearly all the major ethnic and religious groups have fought one another, and politics continues to be dominated by mistrust, outside interference and combustible animosities. There are dozens of armed groups across the country, each with its own political agenda. "The situation in Sudan now is so pregnant with trouble", said Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan's last elected leader, who was overthrown by Bashir in 1989 and has opposed him ever since. Until now. One growing concern is that without Bashir, a peace treaty signed by the central government and southern rebels in 2005 could fall apart. Sudan is a huge, unwieldy and deeply divided country, and the treaty is widely seen as the glue that is holding it together. The treaty calls for elections next year and outlines ways to share wealth and power. Bashir is credited with standing up to hard-liners in his own party and making real concessions to end the war. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the international court's chief prosecutor, has described Bashir as a genocidal mastermind. But in Khartoum, Bashir is widely perceived as a relative moderate. "He is a pigeon, not a hawk", said Ghazi Suleiman, a human rights lawyer who has been jailed 18 times by the Bashir government. From the perspective of many Sudanese political leaders, the court's action could not have come at a worse time. An attack on the capital by a Darfur rebel group in May rattled the ruling National Congress Party, exposing gaps in its aura of military invincibility. "It just showed how the army is stretched to the limits", Ghazi Salah al-Din, a top adviser to Bashir, said in a rare admission of vulnerability by a senior party official. A week later, new fighting between the national army and a former rebel force in the disputed oil-rich area of Abyei forced more than 50,000 people to flee and brought fears of a new round of bloodletting. "A lot of the political entities looked into the abyss and were scared", a senior Western diplomat in Khartoum said anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly. A number of nightmare scenarios - including the implosion of the regime, which might bring Al Qaeda back into Sudan or embolden various rebel groups to try to topple the government - forced political elites in Sudan to choose sides. Most have chosen to stick with Bashir for now. "These are frail and critical moments in our history", said James Morgan, a spokesman for the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ending the north-south war. Bashir, he said, should be given "ample time to implement these agreements". The international court's announcement also came amid signs that Sudan's military-dominated political system was about to go democratic. The National Assembly had just passed a new electoral law, which would create the first freely elected government in more than 20 years. The law would also set aside seats for women and other underrepresented groups. Salah al-Din acknowledged that "mistakes had been made in Darfur", and said the coming political transformation would, through elections, deal with the root of the crisis - political marginalization. The north-south war had always been viewed as the biggest threat to Sudan. But in 2003, as negotiations to end the north-south war dragged on, a new rebel group rose in Darfur to demand a greater share of wealth and power for the long-neglected western region. The government responded with the same ruthless tactics it had used in the south, unleashing Arab militias to chase the rebels and their supporters from Darfur's villages. Since that conflict began in 2003, about 300,000 people have died from violence, disease and hunger, and 2.5 million have scattered from destroyed villages. But diplomats, aid workers and analysts who have traveled to the region recently said things have changed. The conflict has become a violent free-for-all in which a bewildering cast of rebels, bandits and militias play havoc unchecked by government authority. "The government is brutal, untrustworthy and bloodthirsty, but the reality is that most of the violence in Darfur today is not caused by them", the senior Western diplomat said. "Is there a genocide in Darfur right at this moment? No, there isn't". China criticizes UN charges Beijing has said that the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudan's president on charges of genocide in Darfur could disrupt the peace process there, Reuters reported from Beijing, citing China's top official newspaper. China, which is a major investor in Sudan's oil industry and which sells weapons to its government, has expressed "grave concern" over the court's decision to seek an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. "The Darfur crisis in Sudan has not been caused single-handedly by a certain leader, but by the joint force of various political, economic, cultural and environmental factors over a long period of time", said commentary in People's Daily, the Communist Party's mouthpiece.