Sudan’s Bashir to skip UN General Assembly meetings
September 12, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir will not take part in the United Nations (UN) 64th General Assembly meetings, according to Sudan state media.
The official said that Sudan will deliver an address to the General Assembly that focuses on developments in the country particularly the situation in Darfur, Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and Sudan’s position on various issues of mutual concern.
He noted that Sudan will be active in this session in light of his chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China as well as vice president of the UN General Assembly.
The official did not say why Bashir skipped the summits given Sudan’s high profile status in these organizations.
Bashir faces an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his alleged role in Darfur war crimes.
In an interview with Sudan TV earlier this year Bashir said that he will travel to New York to attend the General Assembly meetings if invited.
“If I am invited by the UN to attend in New York I will travel and there is nothing to prevent me from doing so,” he said.
The Sudanese head of state has defied the arrest warrant by travelling to a number of Arab and African states that are not state parties to the treaty that founded the ICC therefore with no obligation to apprehend him.
However, Bashir was forced to turn down invitations from countries like Uganda and South Africa after he was warned that he would arrest if he travelled.
Furthermore, the Sudanese president faced embarrassing moments when president of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva declined a seat next to him at a lunch banquet on the sidelines of the Arab-Latin America summit last April.
At the same summit, the president of Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner walked out to avoid being photographed with Bashir.
The US, which is the headquarters of the UN, has previously said that it is “under no obligation to the ICC to arrest President Bashir”.
But the travel route of a plane carrying Bashir to New York might turn risky if it goes through the airspace of a country that has ratified the ICC treaty
(ST)