But diplomats may oppose such a move on the grounds that they want to keep the road to a political solution open, as they have previously said. Even so, Colonel Qaddafi and his inner circle have consistently resisted offers of safe passage to exile abroad.

“Qaddafi has made clear his determination to hang on,” said Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch. “It defies belief that his arrest warrant is an obstacle to a negotiated settlement of the Libya crisis.”

The court accusations were limited to events from Feb. 18 to “at least” Feb. 28, before a full-scale conflict erupted between the Qaddafi regime and rebel forces and well before the start of the NATO air campaign on March 19. Nonetheless, the prosecutor has said he will investigate possible violations by the rebel side, but has not mentioned civilians deaths the Libyan government has blamed on NATO.

The judges’ statement on Monday said that Colonel Qaddafi would have to answer charges of crimes because he had “absolute, ultimate and unquestioned” control over the state. His son Seif al-Islam was described as “the most influential person” in Colonel Qaddafi’s inner circle, with control over finances and logistics and “the powers of a de facto prime minister.” The judges said that Mr. Senussi had directly ordered the February attacks on civilians in Benghazi as the head of military intelligence, “one of the most powerful and efficient instruments of repression.”

The three men are not expected in The Hague anytime soon. Nevertheless, some politicians and diplomats say they see arrest warrants as useful tools against political leaders once they are identified as potential war criminals. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, wanted by the court on genocide charges, retains strong support at home but has been forced to skip several international meetings for fear of arrest.

Even leaders from countries friendly to Mr. Bashir have kept him at bay by saying that envoys from other countries would refuse to attend gatherings with him. Mr. Bashir, who was traveling to China on Monday, had to postpone his meetings with Chinese officials when he was forced to change his flight plans after a request not to go through Turkmenistan’s airspace.

For the court, which has jurisdiction over cases starting when it opened in 2002, the arrest warrant for Colonel Qaddafi was the second for a sitting president, after that of Mr. Bashir. Other international courts have indicted two sitting presidents for war crimes, Charles G. Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia. Both were eventually arrested and brought to trial.