U.S. Offers Ambivalent Response on Sudan Genocide Charge

WASHINGTON — For years, the Bush administration has taken a strong stance denouncing atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region and labeling them genocide. Yet it offered only an ambivalent response when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court filed genocide charges against Sudan's president.

For all its criticism of President al-Bashir of Sudan, the American administration is reluctant to take steps that lend legitimacy to a court whose jurisdiction it has questioned and whose treaty it refuses to sign.

The Bush administration opposes the court because of suspicions that its jurisdiction is too broad and fears that American servicemen fighting abroad or the officials who command them might not be safe from politically motivated prosecutions.

On Monday, the administration offered some praise for prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's indictment of Mr. Bashir.

"In our view, recognition of the humanitarian disaster and the atrocities that have gone on there is a positive thing," the State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said. But, he added, "we make our own determinations according to our own laws, our own regulations with respect to who should be subject to war crimes and genocide related statutes."