Sudan’s Kiir warned Uganda of possible war over Bashir’s arrest
August 1, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — The Sudanese First Vice president and president of Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) Salva Kiir urgently dispatched an envoy to Kampala recently to warn over threatening to arrest president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir, according to a news report.
Sources told the newspaper that Kiir cautioned that such a situation may cause Uganda to turn “Somalia with suicide bombers making security difficult and there was the risk of war if Bashir was facing arrest”.
Gier said that Kiir “was very concerned and insisted that the matter be resolved quickly” the source told Daily Monitor noting that after years of SPLA fighting Khartoum, Kiir as a former intelligence chief “knew how dangerous an enemy Khartoum can be”.
The Sudanese president was scheduled to travel to Uganda this month in response to an invitation from Musievini to attend the Global 2009 Smart Partnership Dialogue conference.
However, after much political wrangling, Uganda ended up asking Bashir not to attend given the outstanding International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for him.
Uganda is a party to the ICC Statute making it legally obligated to arrest the Sudanese president.
Sudan believes that the African Union (AU) resolution taken in Libya in early July, which instructs African nations not to cooperate with the court in apprehending Bashir, is binding to Uganda.
“The Sudanese were very mad. They were threatening severe action against Uganda including war,” the Daily Monitor quoted a Ugandan delegate to the Non-Aligned States meeting which was taking place in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheik at the time.
The newspaper said that Musievini “is sensitive” to perception of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi who intensively lobbied his African peers at the to endorse the resolution.
So far Botswana, South Africa and Chad have dismissed the AU resolution vowing to arrest Bashir if he was to arrive at their shores.
(ST)