JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Sudan’s regime faced the full glare of outside scrutiny yesterday when the International Criminal Court announced an investigation into war crimes in Darfur.

The probe will be the biggest since the court’s creation seven years ago and marks the first time the ICC has used its powers to launch an inquiry in a country unwilling or unable to do so itself.

“The investigation will be impartial and independent, focusing on the individuals who bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes committed in Darfur,” the court’s chief prosecutor in The Hague, Luis Moreno Ocampo, said.

The court has a sealed list of 51 names of suspected war criminals, among them, it is believed, senior Sudanese officials.

A U.N. investigation into the war in Sudan’s western region, which began two years ago, has already found evidence of “killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape, and other forms of sexual violence.”

The report added: “These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis, and therefore may amount to crimes against humanity.”

About 300,000 people are believed to have died in Darfur – about 5% of the entire population.

Most succumbed to starvation and disease. But the U.N. report said that “genocide” had not taken place. It also blamed rebels styling themselves the Sudan Liberation Army for carrying out atrocities. Insurgent commanders are believed to figure on the list of suspects.

However, the Khartoum regime has already announced that it will “never” hand over any Sudanese citizen for a foreign trial. This was reaffirmed yesterday when Sudan’s deputy foreign minister, Najeeb al-Kheir Abdul Wahab, said that instead of an investigation, the world should “secure a ceasefire in which people could trust for the rendering of justice.”

Sudan insists that its judiciary can deal with any suspected war criminal, and the court’s involvement in Darfur has sparked a more heated reaction from the Khartoum government than any other instance of outside pressure since the onset of the war.

About 10,000 aid workers are now running a relief operation for 2 million refugees inside Darfur and they would provide an obvious target for retaliation from the regime.

“The government has been stung by the decision of the Security Council to hand the issue to the ICC,” Unicef’s special representative for the Darfur emergency, Keith McKenzie, said.

“I hope that people are levelheaded enough to separate the politics from the need for humanitarian aid in Darfur.”

Mr. McKenzie added that aid workers “are not here for political purposes.” He said: “We hope that the government and everybody concerned will make the distinction between the ICC and the essential humanitarian work in Darfur.”

The council first referred Darfur to the court with the passage of Resolution 1593 in March. Sudan’s regime immediately spoke of dire consequences for the aid effort if any suspects were tried abroad.

“A foreign trial will lead to devastating effects on the security front in Darfur,” the foreign minister, Mustapha Osman Ismail, said. “This may cause us to face some disturbing scenarios, such as the abduction of non-Sudanese workers.”