AU not vouching for Bashir’s innocence: Kenya FM

August 5, 2009 (WASHINGTON) — The Kenyan foreign minister Moses Wetangula today defended the resolution adopted by the African Union (AU) granting reprieve to Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir from arrest in the continent.

However, the AU decided in its semi-annual summit last month that African ICC members shall disregard their obligations to cooperate with the court in apprehending the Sudanese head of state.

“The AU does not and has not and will not say that President Bashir is innocent, because we have no capacity to say that. He has been investigated, he has been indicted,” Wetangula told reporters at a press conference with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Nairobi.

The top Kenyan diplomat said that the AU wanted the UN Security Council (UNSC) to invoke its powers under Article 16 of the Rome Statute to suspend Bashir’s indictment for a year.

“The Security Council could suspend the warrant for a year because there was visible progress in Sudan, that there was internal discussions, there were talks going on in Qatar, and we wanted to see whether that texture can bring relative calm and peace in the country,” he added.

The UNSC is divided on the issue of invoking Article 16 particularly among Western members of the council who say that progress need to be made before the arrest warrant could be deferred.

“Nobody will stand in the way of President Bashir being arrested and prosecuted, but for now, the AU’s position is that let’s see what internal mechanisms can be done. I don’t think the AU is asking for too much,” the Kenyan foreign minister said.

Wetangula did not say whether Kenya, an ICC member, is prepared to arrest Bashir if he was to visit despite the AU resolution.

Kenya is currently mulling the issue of prosecuting those responsible for 2007 post-election violence. If the government fails to setup a special tribunal within a year, it will refer the situation to the ICC per an agreement signed last month with the prosecutor of The Hague based court.

The US Secretary of State standing next to Wetangula appeared critical of the AU position.

“The United States and others have continued to support the need to eventually bring President Bashir to justice, but he’s found a lot of protectors, and mostly in this continent, where people have allowed him to travel and have not used the forces of their own judicial and law enforcement institutions to arrest him, to turn him over the ICC,” she said said.

Clinton added that the ICC arrest warrant for Bashir “is a very significant step by the international community”.

“The actions by the ICC sent a clear message that the behavior of Bashir and his government were outside the bounds of accepted standards and that there would no longer be impunity,” she said.

However, she pointed out that the process of bring Bashir to court “takes time”.

“If you look at some of the international tribunals, there are periods of time during which the investigation takes place, if it does get started – in this case, it did – then if an indictment is returned, there is often time before the person indicted is brought to justice,” Clinton told reporters.

In a related development today Ghana’s foreign minister Muhammad Mumuni said that his government would not arrest Bashir if he visits despite being a country that ratified the Rome Statute.

Mumuni said that this position is in line with the AU decision taken in the Sirte summit adding that his country nonetheless respects the ICC, according to statements published on the Ghanaian based ‘The Statesman’ newspaper.

In Kampala today, the Chinese special envoy to Africa Liu Guijin reiterated his country’s opposition to the ICC arrest warrant for Bashir and the leaders of the Ugandan Lord resistance Army (LRA) also wanted by the court.

“The involvement of the ICC indictments at a moment when there is need for a greater push for more political solutions is not solving the purpose,” the ‘New Vision’ newspaper quoted Guijin as saying.

“If Sudan is on fire, the international community should put out the fire,. The situation in Darfur is very complicated. We need a comprehensive approach to address the problem,” he added.

China has pressed Western members of the ICC to agree to suspend Bashir’s warrant but at the same said it will not table such a resolution and instead called on African countries to work on it.

Guijin’s visit comes weeks after Uganda asked Sudan’s Bashir not to accept an invitation to a summit it is hosting to avoid a “diplomatic incident” pursuant to their membership of the ICC.

The UNSC issued resolution 1593 under chapter VII in March 2005 referring the situation in Darfur to the ICC. At the time, African members Tanzania and Benin voted in support of the resolution while Algeria abstained.

(ST)