The Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt – Sudan heads to the United Nations this week to push a behind-the-scenes lobbying effort to avert the prosecution of the country’s longtime president on charges of genocide in Darfur.
But prospects seemed dim at a time when Sudan has shown little willingness to compromise and launched an expansive military offensive against rebels in western Darfur region.
Efforts by African countries, the tiny Gulf state of Qatar and France to solve the crisis also have not yielded tangible results.
The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has asked judges to issue an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir on charges he carried out genocide in Darfur. Up to 300,000 people have been killed and more than 2.5 million have been chased from their homes in the region since fighting between goverment-backed janjaweed militia and rebels began in early 2003.
The court is expected to make its decision before the end of the year, and the Sudanese goverment has been lobbying African and Arab countries to support its attempts to evade al-Bashir’s prosecution.
The African Union has asked the U.N. Security Council to freeze the ICC case against al-Bashir, which can do so if it deems the prosecution as a threat to peace and security. While the Security Council took note of the request in July, it had said it would revisit it later.
But it appears Sudan is now shying away from asking the council to halt the case, as it becomes increasingly less likely that it would be able to avert a veto within the council.
The council initially asked the ICC to investigate the Darfur crisis and freezing the process at this point could be seen as not only undermining the court but also emboldening the Sudanese government.
Sudan also lost one of its biggest supporters in the council, South African President Thabo Mbeki, who announced Sunday he would resign, effective as soon as a new president is chosen. He sent his foreign minister instead to the U.N. General Assembly meeting this week.
For now, Sudan plans to focus its attention on the General Assembly, which it will address on Tuesday.
Al-Bashir’s spokesman, Mahfuz Faidul, said the Sudanese delegation, headed by Vice President Ali Osman Taha, will tell the assembly about Sudan’s efforts to reach a peace deal in Darfur.
Taha will hold talks with several leaders including French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Qatar’s crown prince, the U.N. funded radio Miraya reported, quoting Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N. He is also expected to meet U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to Sudanese media.
Faidul said Khartoum has taken measures to show it is serious about peace in Darfur, including appointing its own Darfur-based prosecutor to look into complaints of violence and reaching out to different Sudanese factions.
A day before flying to New York, Taha made amends with a disgruntled ex-rebel leader who had signed a peace deal with the government in 2006 but returned to fighting early this summer over what he saw as failure to implement the deal.
Faidul said Sudan’s security forces have also gone after bandits in Darfur who endanger the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission and aid workers.
But Faidul stopped short of saying Sudan will request a freeze of the case. He also renewed warnings that attempts to prosecute al-Bashir would backfire.
Sudan is ready to “go further than what most imagine if the United Nations and the Security Council leave us facing the ICC,” he said. “It will be nothing less than ending all our agreements with the United Nations.”
There are outside efforts to resolve the crisis to avoid further turmoil in Darfur.
Qatar has offered to mediate between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels, though it has given few details on the effort.
Khartoum has come out in support of the Qatari initiative, though rebels have been lukewarm.
Hassan al-Turabi, a powerful Sudanese opposition figure accused by Sudan’s ruling party of masterminding the rebellion in Darfur, arrived in Qatar on Sunday and was expected to meet with the emirate’s leadership.
France has also encouraged Sudan to hand over two midlevel officials who were indicted by the ICC in 2007 on crimes against humanity something Khartoum has refused to do.
But French officials have denied reports they’re negotiating any deal with Sudan that would freeze a future warrant against al-Bashir. Faidul described the Paris efforts as a “bargain deal” and dismissed it.
Sudan expert Alex de Waal said Khartoum has little confidence that any sort of deal to avert the prosecution will be worked out.
The current military offensive against strategic rebel targets in Darfur is a sign that Sudan’s powerful security apparatus is taking “preventive measures to secure themselves,” said de Waal, the author of numerous books on Sudan.
Rebel groups said the offensive was an attempt by the government to change the “balance of power on the ground.”
Former U.S. diplomat warns against deferring Sudan president indictment
(ST) WASHINGTON – The former US envoy at the UN said that the world must allow the judicial process of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the case Sudanese President Omer Hassan al-Bashir to proceed.
Richard Holbrooke in an article at the Financial Times titled ‘The arrest of Sudan’s Bashir should proceed’ dismissed views that the Al-Bashir indictment will hurt the prospects for peace in Darfur.
“Those advocating this step argue that it would give negotiators leverage to produce results in Darfur. Yet they have never produced evidence for this, nor defined what the benchmark for success would be at the end of the 12 months. Mr. Bashir is simply playing for time, offering nothing. Mr. Milosevic did the same. Give Mr. Bashir a year and he will take it – and ask for more” he said.
The ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced in mid-July that he requested an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir.
Ocampo filed 10 charges: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder and accused Al-Bashir of masterminding a campaign to get rid of the African tribes in Darfur; Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.
Holbrooke who was the special envoy for the Balkans during the civil war said that when Serb officials were indicted by the Yugoslav tribunal in July 1995 for war crimes in Bosnia the same arguments were brought up on peace vs. justice.
“Less than five months later, an agreement was reached in Dayton to end the war…. What had seemed an insurmountable obstacle turned out to be an unexpected opportunity” he said.
Sudan and a number of regional organizations including the African Union (AU), Arab League, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) condemned Ocampo’s request and called on the UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution under Article 16 of the ICC Statute deferring Al-Bashir’s indictment.
Last week the Guardian newspaper said that France and United Kingdom are quietly backing efforts to stall Al-Bashir indictment.
But the former US diplomat warned against such a step saying it sends the wrong signal to war criminals.
“The US and the EU must resist efforts to suspend ICC prosecutions. Peace negotiations have been stalled for nearly a year for reasons unrelated to a possible warrant against Mr. Bashir. Suspension may seem a safer course to follow in the short run, but it will embolden him and other future suspected war criminals” he said.
“Bringing perpetrators of international crimes to justice is undeniably difficult when trying simultaneously to end a conflict, but it is the right choice” he added.
Holbrooke was in a center of a controversy when the Serb leader Radovan Karadzic alleged the US diplomat made a deal with him promising him that he would be immune from prosecution if he steps down from power.
However Holbrooke vehemently denied the story.
The Sudanese 2nd Vice President Ali Osman Taha is in New York to lobby world countries to support his country’s demand for a deferral.
No country in the UNSC has tabled a formal resolution which needs 9 votes with none of the permanent members using the veto power to block it.
In March 2005 the UNSC triggered the provisions under the Rome Statute and referred the Darfur case to the ICC for investigations.