Britain wants ‘consensus’ over future trial of Darfur criminals

LONDON, Feb 4 (AFP) — British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UN Security Council would decide how to bring to justice suspected war criminals in Sudan’s Darfur region, and called for consensus among its member states.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

In a joint press conference with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Straw said Britain was “in complete agreement (with the United States) about the need to see those who have committed these atrocities brought to justice.”

He then appeared to seek accommodation with the United States over the issue by suggesting that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would not be an appropriate venue for trying those responsible for crimes in Darfur.

“Under the ICC statute itself, because Sudan is not a state party to that statute, the matter falls to be decided in the Security Council,” Straw said.

“All of us know that the natural authority of the international community is greatly strengthened where there is a consensus behind a Security Council decision, and that’s what we shall be working to achieve,” he said.

The statement was a clear shift from Britain’s position stated only two days earlier, backing The Hague-based tribunal.

Straw and International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said in a statement on Wednesday that Britain’s “first preference” would be to hold any Darfur proceedings at the ICC.

The vast region of Darfur in western Sudan has faced what UN experts call a major humanitarian crisis, spawned by a February 2003 uprising by black African groups in Darfur against the Arab government in Khartoum.

A UN panel this week blamed government forces and militia it supports for indiscriminate attacks, including the killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape, pillaging and forced displacement.

However, it stopped short of accusing Khartoum and the militias of genocide against the Darfur population.

Around 70,000 people are estimated to have died in Darfur, many from hunger and disease, while some 1.5 million others have been displaced, many into squalid and dangerous camps.

Rice repeated that Washington opposed the ICC, and she cited examples of UN-backed temporary tribunals which had successfully prosecuted war criminals — the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and Arusha, Tanzania court where perpetrators of the 1994 Rwanda genocide were tried.

“We believe are better off with regional and local accountability mechanisms,” she said.

“We’re also very clear that we believe that those who have committed crimes in Sudan have to be held accountable for them.”

She said that the Security Council, where both Britain and the United States are veto-holding permanent members, was the “right forum” for deciding on any future Darfur war crimes tribunal.

Her government claims the ICC may interfere with global peacekeeping obligations and could be politicised.

In June Washington tried but failed get the United Nations to renew a clause giving US citizens that serve in UN peacekeeping missions immunity from the ICC.