NCP says ICC & opposition parties collaborating to destroy Sudan

May 24, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan blasted opposition parties saying they are attempting to use the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its allies to sabotage the country.

Qutbi Al-Mahdi, a senior NCP official, told the government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) that opposition parties “lost their political legitimacy and popular existence so they rushed again to get boost from enemies of Sudan and whoever is backing them from Zionists and colonialists”.

He further said that this is not surprising because these parties because they previously worked with regional and foreign intelligence and cooperated with them militarily “to destroy Sudan”.

Al-Mahdi’s remarks come in the wake of participation by some opposition parties in the Review Conference of the Rome Statute which is the founding document of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The Review Conference constitutes a special meeting of states parties to the ICC – distinct from the annual Assembly of States Parties (ASP) – to consider amendments to the Rome Statute and to take stock of its implementation and impact.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will attend the conference along with several world leaders.

The ICC has charged three Sudanese individuals president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The ICC judges are currently reviewing whether genocide charges should be added to counts against Bashir after an appeals chamber in the tribunal said that pre-trial chamber erred in the legal standards they used in deciding to scrap it in the warrant phase.

The arrest warrant has hampered Bashir’s international travel for fear of being arrested and also caused a semi-diplomatic isolation as many Western and U.N. officials avoid meeting with him.

Sudan does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction after the UN Security Council referred the Darfur case to the ICC in 2005 in a Chapter VII resolution.

The NCP official said that the attendance of opposition parties at the conference in Uganda later this month “is a provocation to the feelings of the Sudanese and disregard to their self-esteem, dignity and pride in their national sovereignty”.

“We were looking forward [to see] a national opposition [that is] responsible and respectable leading positive actions and not sabotage” Al-Mahdi said.

This month Sudan expressed unhappiness about holding the review conference in an African country. The African Union (AU) summit last year offered their support to Bashir in face of the warrant and endorsed a decision to halt cooperation with the court in apprehending the Sudanese president.

But later on some AU countries quietly distanced themselves from the resolution and warned Bashir not to set foot in their territories so as not to risk arrest.

Khartoum fears that it losing grounds in its campaign to de-legitimize the court regionally particularly after failing to push African nations to withdraw their ratification of the Rome Statute.

So far, 111 countries have ratified the Rome Statute that created the ICC-including 30 in Africa.

Furthermore, the amendments to the statute pushed by the Sudanese government through its African allies were dropped from the conference including limiting the ICC prosecutor’s powers and empowering the UN General Assembly to defer the cases for 12 months under Article (16) of the Rome Statute.

Despite that, sources tell Sudan Tribune that pro-government NGO’s will be present in the conference in an attempt to undermine support of ICC investigations in Darfur.

(ST)