KHARTOUM, 03/05 – Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Thursday an international tribunal's decision to seek his arrest on war crimes charges is a conspiracy aimed at destabilizing the country and disrupting peace efforts in Darfur.

Speaking for the first time since he became wanted, al-Bashir told a Cabinet meeting that the court, the United Nations and international organizations operating in Sudan were "tools of the new colonialism" meant to bring Sudan and its resources under control.

"This is an attempt to get at Sudan," he said.

Al-Bashir's government retaliated immediately after the warrant was issued Wednesday, ordering the expulsion of 10 leading international humanitarian organizations from Darfur, including Oxfam, CARE and Save the Children.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it "a serious setback to lifesaving operations in Darfur." Aid groups protested, saying they had no connection to the court and that their absence could lead to a crisis for more than 2 million war-weary Sudanese who need such basics as shelter, food and clean water.

Al-Bashir said the organizations aimed to disrupt peace efforts in Darfur and that every time his country reaches for a peace deal to end the six-year conflict it is hit with a new international decision against it.

"We in Sudan have always been a target of the U.N. and these organizations because we have said, 'No,'" al-Bashir said. "We said the resources of Sudan should go to the people of Sudan."

The arrest warrant by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court is the tribunal's first against a sitting head of state. U.N. officials said their staff will continue to deal with al-Bashir in Sudan because he remains the president of the country.

Up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes in the region since the war in Darfur began in 2003, when rebel ethnic African groups, complaining of discrimination and neglect, took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.