Sudanese president under mounting pressure to skip Qatar summit

March 20, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — An increasing number of Sudanese figures are urging president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir not to attend the Arab summit that will be held in the Arab Gulf of Qatar later this month.

Bashir faces an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on March 4th for war crimes and crimes against humanity, which include murder, rape and torture allegedly committed in the war ravaged region of Darfur.

Following the decision the ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that Bashir risks apprehension once he leaves Sudan.

Today the Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website with close links to intelligence services published as its top story a call by an Islamic cleric for Bashir to cancel his trip to Doha.

The preacher of the Al-Nilin mosque Ibrahim Nourin was quoted as saying in the Friday sermon that Islamic law does not allow for taking the risk of travelling.

Nourin called on the Sudanese Islamic Fiqh council to issue a religious order declaring that Bashir should not fly to Qatar.

This week the Sudanese former president Siwar Al-Dahab urged Bashir to exercise “patience and wisdom” and not risk travelling to Doha “for his safety and the safety of Sudanese people”.

But in an interview with Egypt’s independent Al-Isboa weekly the Sudanese leader stressed that he will fly to Doha to attend the Arab summit for which he received an official invitation a week ago.

Sudan summoned the French ambassador this week over statements attributed to Eric Chevallier, spokesman of the French foreign ministry in which he suggested that his government will support any operation aimed at arresting the Sudanese president through intercepting the plane.

The French government said Chevallier’s was misquoted by the London based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper which interviewed him.

Al-Tayib Mustafa who heads the pro-government Al-Intibaha newspaper wrote in his column hat he received numerous phone calls from Sudanese people who want Bashir to cancel his appearance in the Doha Arab summit.

Mustafa, who is a relative of Bashir, said that any referendum on the issue of the trip will get a 95% vote against the Sudanese head travelling to Doha.

“We live in a world with no morals, the world of pirates, the world of liars and hypocrites, the world of tyrant Bush, and the symbol of whoredom and obscenity Nicolas Sarkozy” he wrote.

“Is it more difficult to intercept a plane in the air to take over a land by force and colonize it killing and displacing millions of its people?” Mustafa questioned.

Rashid Abdel-Rahim a columnist at the pro-government Al-Rayaam newspaper expressed fear that Bashir may be a victim of conspiracy from “other forces…that do not consider justice or norms or rules or laws that protect immunities or those preventing airspace piracies”.

“We do not fear on the president from Sudan’s sisters in the Kingdom [Saudi Arabia] which he will cross it skies or Doha where he will set his feet as an honorable guest” Abdel-Rahim wrote.

“On the 28th of the month we should offer our prayers to the president and the presidential plane and Sudan and we should celebrate his victorious return god willing…..if something other that happen then he is deserving martyrdom and we are worthy of patience and prayers” he added.

Al-Hindi Izz Al-Deen, deputy editor in chief of Akhir-Lahza, said that Bashir’s participation is a “strategic” issue that should be carefully reviewed.

“What will Sudanese people gain if the president takes part in the summit or what will they lose if he doesn’t” he wrote.

“If a major superpower specifically Russia does not provide diplomatic and security guarantees to the trip of Bashir to Doha then I don’t see… that Arab guarantees are sufficient to take the risk” Al-Deen added.

The Saudi based Al-Watan newspaper quoted an unidentified Sudanese official as saying that the defense minister Abdel-Rahim Hussein met on Thursday with senior military officials till early morning hours in which they recommended that Bashir not embark on the trip.

Furthermore the official said that Bashir’s family echoed the same call in their meeting with him.

The newspaper reported that chief of police will submit a similar formal recommendation to the Sudanese presidency and added that the parliament may adopt a resolution in this regard.

On Monday the Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa from the Syrian capital said that his organization as well as Qatar received the cooperation request but turned it down.

Qatar said it is simply hosting the Arab summit and that it is not a meeting initiated by its government.

“The summit is an Arab meeting, it is not for Qatar or Sudan….Sudan will be invited, and it’s up to the Sudanese government weather to attend or not” the Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jasim Al-Thani told reporters last week.

Qatar is not a member of the ICC’s Rome Statute and is therefore under no legal obligation to arrest Bashir.

However court officials said they could transmit a request to Qatar for executing the arrest warrant in light of UN Security Council (UNSC) 1593 under chapter VII in March 2005 referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC.

Sudan announced it is making special security arrangements for the travel of Bashir to Doha which includes fighter jets guarding the presidential plane.

(ST)