* Moreno-Ocampo says Bashir seeks to threaten the West
* Says Sudanese authorities should arrest Bashir
By Adrian Croft
LONDON, Aug 29 (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor has accused Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of abusing African hospitality and threatening the West as he seeks to avoid arrest on genocide charges.
Kenya chose not to arrest Bashir on the ICC charges when he visited the country on Friday for a ceremony marking the East African nation's new constitution. [ID:nMCD730308]
The ICC, to which Kenya is signed up, accuses Bashir of war crimes and genocide in Sudan's Darfur region, where the United Nations estimates 300,000 people have died in a humanitarian crisis resulting from a counter-insurgency campaign.
Bashir denies the charges, saying they are part of a Western conspiracy.
"President Bashir is fighting for his freedom using different tactcs," ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters in an interview on Saturday during a visit to London.
Those tactics included "abusing African hospitality" by going to neighbouring countries, "threatening Western countries with affecting the south (Sudan) and offering carrots to foreign business, to French, American and English companies," he said.
U.N. Security Council members should implement a strategy to counter Bashir's tactics, Moreno-Ocampo said.
South Sudan is widely expected to choose to split from the north in a January referendum after a 2005 peace accord ended a two-decade-long civil war -- separate from the Darfur violence.
ICC judges reported Kenya to the U.N. Security Council for allowing Bashir's visit. The Hague-based ICC has no police force and relies on member states to enforce its arrest warrants.
But last month, the African Union criticised the ICC's warrant for Bashir and called for its suspension.
CALL FOR SUDAN TO ACT
Moreno-Ocampo said he hoped Bashir would travel further afield so the arrest warrant against him could be implemented "in the air" -- presumably meaning a diversion of his plane.
Sudan's U.N. ambassador called Moreno-Ocampo a "terrorist" in 2008 after an ICC spokeswoman said the court had planned to arrest a wanted Sudanese minister by diverting a plane he was travelling on to Saudi Arabia. The minister called off the trip.
But Moreno-Ocampo said the best solution would be for Sudanese authorities to arrest Bashir. That would be a clear sign Sudan was changing its behaviour, the Argentine said.
He said Bashir had kept his plan to visit Kenya secret.
"As soon as the judges informed the Security Council, he left Kenya. So he is a fugitive president ...," he said.
Moreno-Ocampo said he stood by his promise to seek arrest warrants by the end of the year for up to six Kenyans from both sides of the election violence that killed 1,300 people in 2008.
"I promised to present two cases this year and I will do it," he said. Each case would involve two or three people.
Moreno-Ocampo declined to confirm reports in the Kenyan media that several key witnesses in the Kenyan cases had been flown out of the country to ensure their safety. "I have a duty to protect the witnesses and we are doing that," he said.
Moreno-Ocampo also said prosecutors would be ready, probably next week, to disclose the identity of an intermediary used by the prosecutor's office to help find witnesses in a war crimes case against Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga.
Lubanga's trial was suspended last month after prosecutors refused to turn over the intermediary's identity to the defence. (Additional reporting by Aaron Gray-Block in Amsterdam) (Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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