Washington - The top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court plans to seek an arrest warrant against Sudan President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur, a newspaper reported Friday.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo on Monday is to ask a three-judge panel of The Hague-based war crimes court to approve the arrest, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed UN officials and diplomats.

If the judges agree to Moreno-Ocampo's request, it would be the first time that the tribunal would charge a sitting head of state although such leaders as Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia were charged by other war crimes courts while in office.

However, the move worried some UN officials, the Post said, on concerns that such charges would shut down diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Darfur, which has pitted Arabic-speaking militias of traditionally nomadic peoples against non-Arabic-speaking farmers, and might even lead to attacks on the 10,000 UN and African Union peacekeepers in Darfur.

A short statement Thursday from Moreno-Ocampo's office said he would present evidence of crimes committed in the past five years in Darfur, a western region of Sudan where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed, and present names of people to be charged.

The Argentine prosecutor said he expected the judges from Brazil, Ghana and Latvia to take two to three months to evaluate his evidence and make a decision on his request. (dpa)