Russia signals support to Darfur ICC deferral, UK toughens stance

February 13, 2009 (NEW YORK) — The Russian government today called on the UN Security Council to invoke Article 16 of the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute to suspend prosecution of Sudanese President Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.

“We think their position on this matter makes a lot of sense because we believe that this is a very complex situation” the Russian ambassador at the United Nations Vitaly Churkin told reporters today.

“You have to be mindful of the need for the peace process in Darfur, you have to be mindful of the need to further develop the UNAMID [Darfur peacekeepers] presence in Darfur and the security situation on the ground” Churkin said.

The Russian diplomat was commenting on an informal meeting held yesterday between joint Arab League-African Union (AU) delegation and the UN Security Council (UNSC) members to discuss Article 16.

Diplomats who attended the meeting said that the delegation’s demand was met with strong resistance from the US, UK, Austria and Croatia.

“At this moment we’re not ready to support an initiative that would implement Article 16” French Deputy Ambassador Jean-Pierre Lacroix said.

But the Russian envoy urged the UNSC to proceed forward with stalling the ICC move against the Sudanese head of state saying it will contradict with the pursuit of justice.

“If the UNSC were to go resort to Article 16 of the ICC it would not be infringing on the legal process because actually the statute itself provides for this possibility… in our view the circumstances are exactly such that the UNSC must seriously consider resorting to Article 16” he said.

However the UK envoy at the UN strongly rejected the argument put forward by his Russian counterpart saying that justice is one of several tracks in Sudan which includes UNAMID, peace process, and humanitarian access.

“There has always been four tracks to our policy towards Sudan… we don’t see any reason why any one track should be slowed down because of concerns on other tracks” ambassador John Sawers said.

“We think all these tracks need to ahead and we don’t see any reason why any one track should be slowed down because of concerns on other tracks. Peace and justice go hand in hand and we want that to be the case. In fact it’s the only way to create peace in Sudan if it is accompanied by justice” he added.

This is the first time a UK official speak in more decisive terms on the issue of the deferral. In the past London has appeared to be willing to consider Article 16 if Khartoum makes improvement on the ground.

The African Union, Arab League, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) called for invoking Article 16 which allows the UNSC to suspend the ICC prosecutions in any case for a period of 12 months that can be renewed indefinitely.

However the Arab and African bloc failed to secure the required nine votes to table an Article 16 resolution.

The supporters in the UNSC appear to include Burkina Faso, China, Libya, Russia, Uganda and Vietnam.

Yesterday the US reiterated their position that they will veto any move to blocking the ICC Darfur investigation.

“We want to see those who commit atrocities, who are responsible for atrocities taking place anywhere around the world, held accountable” the US State department Acting Spokesman Robert Wood told reporters today.

The UNSC issued resolution 1593 under chapter VII in March 2005 referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC.

(ST)