AFRICA/SUDAN - The demand to file charges against the President of Sudan creates an important precedent and opens a heated debate in the international community

Khartoum (Agenzia Fides) – Two African crises are the focus of attention for the international community that appears divided on the proper means to resolving it. Following the Russian and Chinese vetoes on a UN Security Council resolution to impose tighter sanctions on the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, the decision made by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, to request the committal for trial of Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir is receiving different reactions.
Bashir is accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity which he supposedly carried out in the last five years in Darfur. Three judges in the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court will now have to decide in the coming months if the evidence presented by the public minister are reasonable grounds for the arrest of the Sudanese Head of State.
Sudan has denied the accusations and declared that it does not recognize the authority of the International Criminal Court. The United Nations, fearing retaliations that could harm its own workers, has pulled out all its personnel except the essential staff in the country. The hybrid military operation of the UN and the African Union (UNAMID) in Darfur has announced its “indeterminate halt” of activity as a preventative form of action, being faced with the risk of an eventual wave of violence.
The African nations seem very concerned: the African Union has asked the Court to suspend any decision on the eventual arrest of Bashir “until we resolve the main problems in Darfur and in the south of Sudan,” fearing a “military coups and anarchy similar to what occurred in Iraq,” if President Bashir is arrested. The Arab League has called for an extraordinary meeting on July 19 of Foreign Ministers of its 22 member-nations, upon the request of Sudan, with the support of Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Libya, and the Palestine National Authority. The Organization for the Islamic Conference has expressed its “deep concern” for the Prosecutor’s decision to call for a re-trial of the Sudanese President.
While French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has expressed his support for the Court, the position of the United States seems paradoxical. Washington has not joined sides with the International Penal Court, although is has denounced the violence against Darfur’s population for some time. For now, the US Administration has expressed its “concern” and has asked all sides to remain calm. Like UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, Washington above all fears all future conflict against the people of Darfur, who have already suffered 5 years of civil war.
As is the case in Zimbabwe, in the Sudanese crisis, there are economic interests of various powers in jeopardy, as well as the power of the international communities to intervene in “internal affairs” in other countries, when it is a matter of serious human rights violations. The eventual re-trial of Bashir, current Head of State, would create an important precedent, one that is certainly not appetizing to several of his colleagues. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 15/7/2008)