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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2011 - 7:24:29 AM |
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African Union For Alternative To Arresting Sudan President
| 7/27/2010 1:23 AM ET
| The African Union has criticized the issuance of arrest warrant by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) against Omar al-Bashir, present President of the Sudan, for war crimes and genocide, saying it was "undermining African solidarity and African peace and security".
Malawian president Bingu wa Mutharika, who holds the rotating African Union presidency, urged the continent's leaders at Monday's opening session of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CENSAD) summit in the Ugandan capital of Kampala, to explore ways to resolve the conflict in the Sudan without the need to have Bashir arrested.
He asserted that subjecting a sovereign head of state to a warrant of arrest was undermining African solidarity and African peace and security that they had fought for so many years.
"There is a general concern in Africa that the issuance of a warrant of arrest for... al-Bashir, a duly-elected president, is a violation of the principles of sovereignty guaranteed under the United Nations Charter and under the African Union charter," the Malawian leader said.
"Maybe there are other ways of addressing this problem. Let us together explore this possibility," he felt.
Mutharika's stand was corroborated earlier in the day by U.K. lawyers and a network of Sudanese NGOs who asked the African leaders to appeal to the ICC to revoke the warrant of arrest against Bashir.
Earlier this month, the ICC at the Hague, the Netherlands, which Bashir refuses to recognize, issued a second arrest warrant against the embattled Sudanese leader adding three more counts of genocide in the war-torn Darfur region to the list of charges--first issued in 2009--already filed against him. He has already been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
African Union member-states refuse to comply with the arrest warrant against Bashir.
Delegates from 53 African countries, attending the CENSAD summit, are expected to focus on security in Somalia.
President Bashir cancelled plans to attend the AU Summit after a Ugandan foreign ministry official said the East African nation was obliged to arrest him as it was a signatory to the ICC treaty.
Meanwhile, a draft of a resolution to be passed at the AU meeting reportedly contained two contentious clauses about the arrest warrants that were later deleted.
The first clause advised African countries, including 30 who are members of the ICC, not to arrest Bashir if he visited their nations. The signatories to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC, obliges them to carry out its arrest warrants.
"[The AU] reiterates its decision that AU member-states shall not co-operate with the ICC in the arrest and surrender of President Bashir," the paragraph said.
The second deleted clause attacked Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor leading the case against Bashir.
With the ICC having no powers to enforce its arrest warrant, Moreno-Ocampo said last week: "Implementing the warrant is the state [parties'] responsibility."
AU Pledges Reinforced Somalia Force
African Union leaders are reported to have agreed to reinforce the group's peacekeeping force in Somalia to counter al-Shabab militants.
They approved a request to send 2,000 more troops to the Somali capital Mogadishu as well as requests for new equipment for the force, officials said.
Rules of engagement will be changed to allow the troops to carry out pre-emptive attacks against the hard-line Islamist insurgents if case of an imminent attack.
Al-Shabab claimed responsibility for the July 11 twin bomb attacks in Uganda's capital, Kampala, which targeted people who were watching the football World Cup final at a Kampala restaurant and a sports ground. The attacks killed 74 people.
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