Kenyan president invites Sudan’s Bashir to IGAD summit, date and location unknown

November 10, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki today extended an invitation to Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir to attend the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development (IGAD) special summit that will tackle the South Sudan referendum scheduled to take place next January.

Sudan’s official news agency (SUNA) said that the acting Kenyan foreign minister George Saitoti handed the invitation letter to Bashir which also addressed bilateral relations between the two countries.

Bashir expressed appreciation to Kenya’s role in hosting the peace talks between North and South Sudan which led to signing the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). He promised to satisfy the invitation for the IGAD summit.

However, the SUNA report did not say when or where the IGAD summit will take place. The organizers moved the summit from Nairobi last month to Addis Ababa after the Kenyan government came under pressure not to receive Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and genocide committed in Darfur.

Saitoti said that Kibaki invited Bashir in his government’s capacity as head of IGAD subgroup on Sudan.

Theoretically, Kenya as a full ICC member has a legal obligation to arrest Bashir should he set foot on its territory. However, last August it chose to invite the Sudanese president to attend the promulgation of the country’s new constitution without apprehending him.

The decision made Kenya come under intense criticism from Western countries and even caused rifts within its coalition government as prime minister Raila Odinga condemned the visit saying he was not made aware of it.

Despite relocating the venue of the IGAD summit, it was later decided that it be delayed indefinitely. No new date was set though.

The then Kenyan Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula had said it was logical for the meeting to take place at the African Union’s (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa and denied that the change of venues was because of ICC pressure.

“We are trying to see if we can have it in Addis, which is the seat of the AU (African Union), so that the twin bodies of IGAD and the AU itself can deal with the issues, in preparation for the January 9 referendum,” Wetangula told Reuters by phone.

“We have not and we will not divert any meetings out of Nairobi because of ICC. ICC does not have a hold on Kenya, we are a signatory to a treaty establishing it so we cannot live under fear over a treaty that we are just a party to,” he said.

But the Kenyan government later informed the ICC judges that Bashir is not expected to visit for the IGAD summit which was later postponed.

Kenyan officials have argued that they are committed to an African Union (AU) decision stating that no country in the continent shall cooperate with ICC in apprehending Bashir. But several countries such as South Africa, Uganda and Botswana said they will not abide by these resolutions.

(ST)