Sudan’s Bashir receives verbal message from Chadian president
March 24, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir on Sunday received a verbal message from his Chadian counterpart Idriss Deby, state media reported.
SUNA quoted the Chadian foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, who conveyed the message, as underscoring the firmness of Sudanese-Chadian relations.
In his response to questions raised in the media that Chad had succumbed to pressure to postpone the Green Belt Summit this month due to the participation of Bashir, Mahamat affirmed his country’s “unshakable” stance, which it says is in line with the African Union’s (AU) position on the matter, describing reports his country was swayed by international demands as baseless.
The Sudanese leader was scheduled to fly to the Chadian capital N’Djamena this week to participate in the summit, which has since been rescheduled for reasons which remain unclear.
Last week, the Sudanese minister of environment and forestry, Hassan Abdel-Gadir Hilal, said his country would be present at the summit next month but did not say whether Bashir would lead Sudan’s delegation.
In a separate interview this week with the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Chad’s top diplomat also declined to confirm Bashir’s attendance.
Chad came under fire for receiving Bashir three times despite arrest warrants issued for him by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2009 and 2010 on 10 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, allegedly committed in Darfur since 2003.
The central African nation maintains it is simply adhering to an AU decision urging member states not to cooperate with the ICC in apprehending the Sudanese leader, though several countries did not abide by it.
(ST)