Berlin  - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has emphatically denied reports he expressed concern over moves to issue an international arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar Beshir for genocide in Darfur.

Reports on Sudanese radio that he had expressed great concern over the application by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo were "completely false," Ban told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) in an interview published Wednesday.

Ban acknowledged, however, that he had expressed concern at remarks by Sudanese ambassador to the United Nations Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, who linked the safety of UN peacekeepers in Sudan to the application for the warrant.

"I told Beshir I was deeply concerned at remarks of this kind," Ban, who is on a two-day visit to Germany, told the SZ in remarks translated from the German.

Ban emphatically rejected allegations in the German media that he had sought to undermine the ICC's work, although he acknowledged that, if the arrest warrant was issued, it could jeopardize UN peace efforts in the Sudan's Darfur province.

Suggestions he had "stabbed the court in the back" were "completely unacceptable and a total misunderstanding," Ban said.

But he added: "If Beshir is formally charged, that could place me in a rather difficult position.

"Who, if not I, should then negotiate over the peace process?" he asked.

Following a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin Tuesday, Ban urged the Sudanese government to protect UN peacekeepers in Darfur.

"I urge the Sudanese government to fully cooperate with the United Nations," Ban said amid reports UN officials were moving out of Khartoum in response to threats that UN and other international staff could be targeted.

Ban stressed the independence of the ICC had to be respected. "Peace and justice should go hand in hand," Ban said. "Peace without justice cannot be sustainable."

Some 16,000 international humanitarian workers supporting more than 4.2 million refugees and internally displaced persons had to be protected, Ban said.

Ban was visiting UN organizations based in Bonn Wednesday before leaving Germany. (dpa)