KHARTOUM, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Sudan's justice minister appointed a chief prosecutor on Tuesday to investigate crimes in Darfur over the past five years, state news agency SUNA said.

Nimr Ibrahim Mohamed is an advisor at the Justice Ministry and will head a committee charged with investigating all crimes in western Sudan since the conflict there began in 2003.

The International Criminal Court last month moved to indict Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide and war crimes in Darfur.

Rights lawyers said the appointment of Mohamed to lead an investigation on Darfur was meant to offset the ICC indictment but it would not work.

"Sudanese laws are weak and the Justice Ministry is not independent," said Kamal Omer, a lawyer from the opposition Popular Congress Party. "This is just playing games."

Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur in early 2003 accusing the central government of neglect. Khartoum mobilised mostly Arab militia to quell the revolt.

International experts estimate some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes. Khartoum puts the death toll at around 10,000.

The ICC chief prosecutor charged Bashir's state apparatus was directly responsible for killing 35,000 people and indirectly for the deaths of at least 100,000 more in Sudan's remote west.

Lawyer Muez Hadra said Sudanese laws did not contain the crimes being investigated by the ICC including genocide and crimes against humanity so there was no way to prosecute them.

Africa's top diplomat Jean Ping met Bashir and other officials in Khartoum on Monday and urged the U.N. Security Council to suspend the ICC investigation into the president to allow peace efforts to continue.

Regional powers worry any indictment would cause problems for the peacekeeping mission in Darfur and stall any peace process. (Reporting by Opheera McDoom, editing by Mary Gabriel)

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