Foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told journalists here Wednesday that President Omar Hassan el-Bashir presides over the higher committee, while the lower diplomatic committee is an affiliate of the el-Bashir body.

He said the Bashir-led committee was undertaking a comprehensive study of the resolution and will submit its recommendations to the Council of Ministers next Sunday, while the diplomatic committee was working on political and other implications of the resolution.

Khartoum has vehemently rejected Security Council resolution 1593 as "unfair" and "narrow-minded," insisting that the Sudanese judiciary was capable of trying all individuals suspected of war crimes in war-ravaged Darfur.

A UN panel prepared a list of some 50 suspects it submitted to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan who subsequently passed it on to the ICC in what amounts to a kick-off of the process leading to trial of suspects in the Darfur saga.