NYALA, Sudan — Sudan’s president made a defiant visit to Darfur just a week after being charged with genocide in the war-ravaged region, vowing not to be intimidated by the indictment and then breaking into a tribal dance on a parched field to the delight of cheering supporters.

Wearing a beige suit and sunglasses and carrying a silver-tipped cane, President Omar al-Bashir exuded confidence during his stops Wednesday. He sought to cast himself as a peacemaker during speeches across the troubled land where an international prosecutor accuses him of committing crimes against humanity.

The carefully orchestrated trip seemed designed to portray the president as being deeply concerned about the region’s people as his government tries to persuade the U.N. Security Council to block the case against him. It was Mr. Bashir’s first known visit to Darfur in more than three years, and he rarely allows Western journalists to accompany him anywhere.

For hours, state television broadcast pictures of thousands of people in brightly colored tunics screaming “God is great!” and waving banners reading “No! No! to the prosecutor!” and “We are with you, al-Bashir!” Some signs were in English.

Last week, the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor filed 10 charges against Mr. Bashir for allegedly masterminding a campaign of extermination and rape targeting three Darfur tribes as part of the government’s campaign to quell a rebellion. The United Nations says about 300,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted over the past five years.

“The president came to Darfur to send a message that (the ICC prosecutor) has no case,” a member of Mr. Bashir’s National Congress Party traveling with him, Abdel Mahmoud al-Koronky, said.

During one stop at northern Darfur, Mr. Bashir met with 600 refugees from various tribes, including those he is accused of targeting with atrocities, but the crowd at El Fasher appeared to be carefully hand-picked by his advisers.

The president had no plans to visit any of the region’s sprawling refugee camps where people have moved to escape violence. He promised to send them farm tractors and improve safety in the camps by giving security jobs to former rebels, but gave no details.

“The real sickness here is the suffering of the displaced, because they are the ones who lost their sense of security and safety in their hometowns,” Mr. Bashir told the group at El Fasher.

In another apparent gesture toward his opponents at Darfur, Mr. Bashir said he would free more than 80 young rebels imprisoned after taking part in a brazen May attack near the capital, Khartoum, which is hundreds of miles from their desert bases in the country’s west. He called them “boys” and said they would be freed and pardoned, but did not say when.

On touching down in the torrid region, Mr. Bashir jumped out of his plane and walked briskly into a boisterous crowd of supporters, his ever-present cane in hand. Later, he crouched and waved the cane back and forth, rousing people in a traditional warrior dance. Doves were released into the air.

Visiting El Fasher, he landed at the same airport where rebels blew up government planes in April 2003, in an attack that a report last year by the ICC prosecutor described as a “turning point” that greatly escalated the war.

Mr. Bashir’s troubles at Darfur began a few months that attack, when ethnic Africans in the remote western region took up arms against his Arab-dominated regime because of what they consider discrimination and to press for a larger share of state funds and services.

His government is accused of using allied Arab militiamen known as janjaweed to commit atrocities seeking to cow rebel supporters. Mr. Bashir and other officials deny doing that.

Critics of Mr. Bashir characterized the trip as a stage-managed affair to bolster Sudan’s efforts to rally allies in hopes of getting the Security Council to suspend any arrest warrant by the ICC.

“It’s all a show and a sham,” the executive director of Dream for Darfur, an initiative that has sought to pressure China to use its influence as a major trading partner of Sudan to pressure Mr. Bashir into improving security at Darfur, Jill Savitt, said.

Darfur refugees have told relief workers they are “overjoyed” Mr. Bashir has been charged, said Ms. Savitt, who was not in Sudan.

The president of the Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition, Jerry Fowler, said, “Whenever al-Bashir or his regime is under pressure, they try to do just enough to alleviate the pressure, and that’s what he’s doing.”

If no arrest warrant is issued for Mr. Bashir, he will “go back to business as usual,” Mr. Fowler said.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo indicted al-Bashir last week on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes. He has asked the ICC to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s leader, but it will be months before a panel of judges rules on the request.

Those in the cheering crowds rejected the negative view of their embattled president. “If he weren’t good, do you think his government would have lasted 19 years?” a 32-year-old airport security assistant, Asia al-Sidik Ibrahim, asked.

Sweat dripped from the president’s forehead as temperatures hovered above 100 degrees. Mr. Bashir changed his clothes twice during the day, choosing light brown suits in slightly different shades.

His language was colloquial, peppered with references to Islamic verse and local Darfur traditions.

“We know God, and we fear him. We also fear the prayers of someone who has suffered injustice,” the 64-year-old leader said.

Mr. Bashir avoided any mention of the charges against him, but alluded generally to the case by calling it an attempt to foil his government’s efforts to restore peace at Darfur. Sudan will not be intimidated by the threat of sanctions either, he said.

“We will only bow to God, who is the sole provider,” Mr. Bashir said.

Without mentioning the ICC prosecutor by name, the president said: “Every time we take a step forward, make progress and signs of peace emerge, those people try to mess it up, return us to square one and distract us with marginal issues and false allegations.”

At a sunset rally at the town of Nyala, Mr. Bashir touted what he called his accomplishments in the troubled region, such as increasing the number of schools at Darfur from seven to 195 over his 19 years in power.

Mr. Bashir did acknowledge “injustices” at Darfur, but he did not specify them or identify those he thought responsible.

“Yes, we all know that there have been problems in Darfur and we know that there have been injustices,” he said. “But we, from day one, sought to bring peace for all the people of Darfur.”

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Associated Press writer Carley Petesch in New York contributed to this report.