AU asks UN to delay possible Sudan war crimes charges

ADDIS ABABA: African Union leaders on Monday asked the UN Security Council to delay a decision by the International Criminal Court on whether to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on war crimes charges.
 
"The African Union requests the UN Security Council to defer the process initiated by the ICC, taking into account the need to ensure that the ongoing peace process is not jeopardised," Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe told reporters.

"We are asking for a delay within the rules of the Rome Statute," he said after the AU's Peace and Security Council meeting at its headquarters in Addis Ababa.

The UN Security Council can pass a resolution to defer for a period of 12 months any investigation or prosecution by the ICC and the delay may be renewed by the council under the same conditions.

"The AU invites the (AU) commission to take all necessary steps for the establishment, within the period of 30 days of this meeting, for a high-level panel made up of distinguished Africans to examine the situation," Maduekwe added.

"We urge the Sudanese government to take immediate steps in investigating human rights violations in Darfur," he said.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo accuses Beshir of having personally instructed his forces to destroy in substantial part three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur: the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa.

Moreno-Ocampo said the president had masterminded the murder, torture and rape of civilians to commit genocide.

Last week, Moreno-Ocampo asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Beshir's arrest. A decision may take several months, but if it is granted, it would be the first issued by The Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.

Arab League ministers have rejected what they said was a lack of lack of balance in Moreno-Ocampo's report, saying it said nothing about crimes committed by the rebels in Darfur.

On Sunday the group's Secretary-General, Amr Mussa, held talks with Beshir in an attempt to stall possible war crimes charges.

In Nairobi, Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki has warned any bid to put Beshir on trial would prove counter-productive.

International efforts would be better spent seeking a lasting solution to the violence in Darfur than in bringing Beshir before courts "that may not have an understanding of the conflict."

"Any isolationist policy against the sitting government of Sudan will be counter-productive," Kibaki said in a statement released after talks here with Beshir's special envoy, Bonal Malual.

Sudan Justice Minister Abdel Basit Sabdarat welcomed the AU position.

"Sudan does not condone impunity and we would prosecute crimes of all sorts. Sudan is not governed by the law of the jungle, it is a responsible state with an independent judicial system," he told the AU council.

"The Sudan always opted for an African solution under the umbrella of the AU," Sabdarat said, adding the Africa's biggest nation "cannot be made the Achilles heels of Africa."

Sudan was committed to the existing peace deal that ended 21 years of fighting in southern Sudan in 2005.

Officials said Sudan was deploying envoys to other African leaders to rally support for Beshir, an army officer who came to power in a 1989 coup.

The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.

It began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.

According to the ICC statute, if credible trials of alleged war criminals are held domestically the court's own charges are dropped.

Sudan's two other ICC indictees, current cabinet minister Ahmed Harun and Arab militia leader Ali Kosheib, had been due to be tried in Sudanese courts on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

But Kosheib's trial was indefinitely suspended in March 2007 and Harun was briefly detained and released last October for lack of evidence.

Sudanese diplomatic efforts now focus on persuading the UN Security Council to freeze any prosecution of Beshir for 12 months, renewable, warning that peace prospects would be severely undermined.