Court 'wrecks peace hopes'

2008-06-04 20:27

Andrew Heavens

Khartoum - Sudan accused the International Criminal Court's prosecutor of wrecking the peace process for Darfur on Wednesday during a visit to Khartoum by envoys from the UN Security Council.

After meeting the 15 council members, Sudan's foreign minister said he had assured them Khartoum was working hard to defuse tensions between the north and south as both sides build up troops around the disputed region of Abyei.

Sudan's UN ambassador said ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo was preparing a "fictitious and vicious" case against government officials that was diverting attention from last month's Darfur rebel attack on Khartoum.

"Ocampo is destroying the peace process and we demand that this man be held accountable for what he is doing to the peace process in Sudan," Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem said as the Security Council envoy met government officials.

The envoys are spending three days in Africa's biggest country during a tour of African hotspots. In Sudan, they are questioning the government on Darfur and a troubled north-south peace deal.

Ocampo's new report, which he will present to the Security Council, says high-ranking government members were responsible for atrocities, diplomats familiar with the report told Reuters.

Ocampo is also unhappy that Khartoum has not arrested a minister indicted over war crimes in the western Darfur region. He will brief the Security Council on Thursday.

Several council members raised the issue in a meeting with Nafie Ali Nafie, an adviser to Sudan's president, who re-iterated Khartoum's view that it was not bound by the ICC.

"We got an unsatisfactory reply," Britain's UN Ambassador John Sawers told reporters.

Prospects for peace are grim

Darfur rebels took up arms in 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglecting the largely non-Arab region. International experts say the conflict has caused the deaths of at least 200 000 people. The government says 10 000 have been killed.

The Security Council has approved deployment of 26 000 UN-AU peacekeepers. Only 9 000 are on the ground.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Deng Alor said Sudan had agreed to the deployment of Thai and Nepalese battalions once Ethiopian and Egyptian troops had deployed.

But the prospects for peace are grim. Sudanese factions accuse each other of lacking good faith, the rebels are divided and hopes for talks sank last month when the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked Omdurman, a Khartoum suburb.

Abdalhaleem said the court prosecutor's move against officials was dangerous. "Ocampo is coming with this to divert attention (from) the JEM attack and also to give mixed signals to rebels to do it again," he said.

The court is seeking the arrest of Ahmed Haroun, former state minister of interior, and militia commander Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb. They are suspected of inciting murder, rape, and torture, as well as the forced displacement of villagers in Darfur.

- Reuters