UNITED NATIONS — President Obama is setting up the next big clash between America and the International Criminal Court, according to human rights activists who say Washington’s Sudan envoy undermines the Hague-based world judicial body’s prosecution of President Bashir.

In stark contrast to the Bush administration, which has eyed the ICC’s concept of “international jurisdiction” with much healthy skepticism and declined to join the court, Mr. Obama’s team has sent observers to ICC gatherings and vowed to cooperate with Hague investigators in what is largely seen as an attempt by some of the president’s top jurists to promote full American membership.

At the same time, Mr. Obama’s personal envoy to Sudan, Scott Gration, testifying at the Senate last week, said he is supporting an African Union initiative to create locally-based “truth and reconciliation mechanisms.” Hague watchers fear that such mechanisms will undermine the ICC’s ambitious – and first ever – indictment of a sitting head of state.

Mr. Bashir was indicted in 2008 by the ICC’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, on allegations of war crimes at Darfur. But the leader of South Africa, President Mbeki, who has long complained that the ICC only takes up African cases, responded to the indictment with a counter initiative to set up a “hybrid” body of Sudanese and international jurists who would look into Darfur cases. The African Union embraced Mr. Mbeki’s plan, and announced it would shun the ICC.

Now America is “coming to support Mbeki’s approach, and that’s a change,” the United Nations’ representative in Darfur, Ibrahim Gambari, told me today.

Speaking to the Senate’s foreign relation committee last week, Mr. Gration said that the Obama administration remains supportive of “international efforts” to try genocide suspects. But, he added, America is also pursuing “locally-owned accountability and reconciliation mechanisms in light of the recommendations made by the African Union’s high level panel on Darfur.”

Administration officials deny that Mr. Gration’s testimony represents a policy change, saying that since October 2009, the Obama administration has supported both the international track and the regional approach. When it comes to Darfur, “we are for accountability, period,” a State Department official told me today.

Critics say Mr. Gration’s embrace of the Sudan-based trial process will allow Mr. Bashir to get off the hook. “Sudan’s courts are under the thumb of Bashir’s dictatorial regime,” the director of the David S. Wyman Institute for holocaust studies, Rafael Medoff, said in a statement. He has set up “Bashir Watch,” a group tracking the movements of the Sudanese dictator. “If Bashir is tried before a local Sudanese court, there is a real danger he will escape with a slap on the wrist,” Mr. Medoff added. America “has a moral obligation to facilitate Bashir’s arrest and bring him to justice” at Hague.

The Bush administration, which studiously refrained from any hint of support for the ICC, nevertheless declined to block the U.N. Security Council referral to the Hague of Darfur, where Secretary of State Powell has said “genocide” is taking place. Mr. Ocampo then indicted Mr. Bashir, calling on all ICC members to arrest and bring him to justice. But the African Union and the Arab League declined to cooperate, allowing uninterrupted visits by Mr. Bashir to several African and Arab capitals.

In the West, the debate over Mr. Bashir’s prosecution has long pitted human rights advocates against proponents of “real-politik.” Several public clashes erupted even within the Obama administration over Sudan policy, as General Gration advocates a go-easy approach to the Khartoum regime, while a group of hardliners, led by the American envoy here, Susan Rice, demands that Mr. Bashir pay for his crimes.

Mr. Gration nevertheless has raised Khartoum government’s ire when he recently suggested an American support for establishing an independent state in the oil-rich south of Sudan, where a referendum on secession is scheduled for January.

The south Sudan independence movement commands a sizable majority in the largely Christian and Animist region. If the south splits from the country, the war in Darfur, which is in the west of Sudan, may escalate anew as the locals demand independence as well. Fearing the loss of oil revenues, Mr. Bashir’s government has warned a split could lead to horrible bloodshed.

Washington is talking now about a “peaceful divorce” between the south and Khartoum, Sudan’s ambassador here, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad, told me today. America should instead discourage secession and “avoid sending mixed signals,” he said.