US non-committal on French move for Darfur trials

WASHINGTON, March 24 (AFP) — The United States was non-committal Thursday on a French push to try war crimes from Sudan’s Darfur region in an international tribunal rejected by Washington.

UN ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said France would put off a Security Council vote on a resolution it has proposed that would ensure any war crimes trials over Darfur are held at the International Criminal Court. (AFP).

France has drafted a UN Security Council resolution to prosecute charges stemming from the Darfur conflict before the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, which the Americans refuse to recognize.

The United States wants to try such cases in a court in Tanzania. But deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli sidestepped repeated questions Thursday on whether the United States would block the French proposal.

“The French proposal is out there. It will be the subject of discussion,” he told reporters at the State Department’s daily briefing, declining to be drawn into what he called “theoretical possibilities.”

Ereli said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke Thursday to her French counterpart Michel Barnier about the Security Council proceedings but did not give any details.

“Our position, I think, on the ICC is well known, as is our commitment to accountability in Sudan and for those who have committed crimes in Darfur,” Ereli said.

“And we will be working with the French and others on the Security Council to produce a positive outcome.”

US officials reject the ICC for fear that it could be used as an instrument for politically motivated prosecutions of US diplomats and soldiers around the world.

But some commentators suggested the United States, which has described the situation in Darfur as genocide, could find it difficult to exercise its veto to block ICC trials supported by most Security Council members.

France said Thursday it would put off a vote on its resolution, postponing one of the thorniest disputes over Darfur, where an estimated 180,000 people have died since the launch of a rebel uprising more than two years ago.

The French move cleared the way for a vote later Thursday to approve a peacekeeping force of 10,000 in Sudan to monitor a January peace accord, which ended 21 years of north-south civil war in Africa’s largest country.