Sudan: al-Bashir indictment derails Darfur peace

Sudan’s vice-president this week dismissed a possible war-crimes indictment of the largest African country’s president as a nefarious plan that is intended to derail the fragile Darfur peace process.

“The arrest request targeting the country’s leader, symbol of its sovereignty and dignity, is a failed attempt at political and moral assassination and derailing the peace process,” Ali Osman Mohamed Taha told the United Nations General Assembly.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has asked the court’s judges to charge Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with genocide in Darfur and to issue a warrant against him.

The move by the ICC prosecutor, Taha said, has a “secret agenda that has nothing to do with justice and achieving peace and stability in Darfur”.

ICC judges have summoned the chief prosecutor for a first hearing next week on his request to charge al-Bashir with genocide, Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters in an interview.

The Arab League, African Union and other alliances have urged the Security Council to block moves to indict al-Bashir to avoid shattering the peace process. French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week suggested Paris could support a suspension of the investigation if Khartoum ended the killings.

In his UN speech, Taha said that the Khartoum government was committed to the Darfur peace process.

“We would like to stress anew from this podium our complete commitment to achieving a peaceful and political settlement to the Darfur issue,” the vice-president added.

A joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force has only about 10 000 of the 26 000 soldiers and police in Darfur that were promised in a Security Council resolution from July 2007.

Rebels accuse Sudanese government forces of stepping up attacks on civilians and villages while Khartoum says it is restoring law and order to rebel enclaves in the western Darfur region.

Sudan, Taha said, will make good on its promise to hold general elections in mid-2009 and to finish a national plan to disarm and reintegrate rebels and remove land mines.

Khartoum also wants more than a decade of US sanctions to be lifted, he said.

“We also call for lifting of unilateral sanctions against our country that defeat the real purpose for comprehensive peace, which is that Sudanese citizens enjoy the fruits of peace,” Taha noted.

The US and Sudan have been in talks on normalising ties, but first Washington wants to ensure lasting peace in southern Sudan and an end to conflict in Darfur.—Reuters