ISTANBUL, Turkey — Sudan’s indicted president denied Wednesday that his regime is orchestrating genocide in the troubled western region of Darfur — and offered hope for an end to the violence and the dawn of reconciliation by promising free and fair elections next year.
President Omar al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague last month on genocide and war-crimes charges. Prosecutors say militias unleashed by his government have killed some 300,000 ethnic Africans since 2003. More than 2.5 million have been displaced.
Al-Bashir, speaking in Turkey during his first trip abroad since the indictment, said the death toll was inflated.
He was quoted by the Al-Arabiya TV network on Wednesday as saying that he would go to war and ask Darfur peacekeepers to leave, if the International Criminal Court formally seeks his arrest.
But al-Bashir offered something else his southern rivals have been longing for: free elections.
