Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem says Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, is “a screwdriver in the workshop of double standards” for seeking to prosecute the president of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for genocide in Darfur.  He rejects the term genocide and says the prosecutor is unfairly picking on Africa’s largest country and ignoring war crimes elsewhere.

Moreno-Ocampo accuses Bashir of launching a genocide campaign in 2003 that was intended to wipe out three ethnic groups in Darfur, a desolate and remote region of western Sudan where oil was discovered in 2005. He says the Sudanese leader used mass murder, rape, deportation and “slow death” by starvation and disease to kill tens of thousands in Darfur.  Moreno-Ocampo wants the ICC judges to issue an international arrest warrant for Bashir.

Khartoum rejects the charges and says it will never hand over any of its citizens to The Hague, where the ICC is based. Like the United States, Russia and China, Sudan is not a party to the ICC, though the Security Council referred the issue of Darfur to the court in 2005.

Abdalhaleem says that if the judges decide to indict Bashir it will ignite a “curtain of fire” that will engulf all of Sudan and the region. He has yet to provide details, but U.N. peacekeeping officials say they are worried.

China, Russia, South Africa and others fear an indictment of Bashir would shatter the fragile peace process in Darfur and have vowed to push the Security Council to freeze the ICC investigation of Bashir. The United States, Britain, France and other Western powers say they do not want to tamper with the independence of the ICC and oppose intervening.

The African Union, the Arab League and non-aligned nations have also urged the council to suspend any ICC indictment of Bashir. Russia’s U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin has said that the countries calling for a suspension comprise roughly two-thirds of the earth’s population.

Those arguing for a suspension say the top priority should be the full deployment of all 26,000 U.N.-African Union peacekeepers (only 9,500 are there now) and a swift end to the 5-year-old conflict in Darfur, in which international experts believe at least 200,000 have died, with another 2.5 million left hungry and homeless.

Richard Dicker, an international justice expert at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, says the opposite is true — nothing could be better for peace in Darfur than to indict, arrest and try the man believed to be responsible for orchestrating the genocide.

What do you think?  Is the West guilty of applying double standards for justice in the developing world?  Do you fear a “curtain of fire” in Africa if Bashir is indicted? Should the world push for peace in Darfur now and worry about indictments later?  Or should justice come first for the victims of war crimes in Darfur, whatever the cost?

First on Zimbabwe, now on Darfur, Western countries have lost out at the U.N. Security Council to African states backed by China and Russia.

A Western attempt to get sanctions imposed on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s government flopped on July 11. Three weeks later, when it came to renewing the mandate of peacekeepers in Darfur, Western countries bowed to demands to include wording that made clear the council would be ready to freeze any International Criminal Court indictment of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide. The United States abstained, but that made no difference to the vote.

The question had long come up in Western countries as to how much Africa mattered to them given what often seemed intractable wars, famine, disease and poverty. From an African perspective, Western countries - often former colonial powers - have sometimes been accused of arrogance, meddling and ignorance of the continent’s realities.

But while Africa’s economies were once dependent on aid and finance from the West, it is China and other Asian countries that are now rushing to invest, helping to drive unprecedented growth. How Africa will deal with the new investment was a key topic at this week’s meeting in Mauritania with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. G8 countries, meanwhile, appear to be falling short on their promises of aid.

Investment from China comes without the conditions that Western countries or institutions might insist on. Meanwhile, China has been very ready to back African friends in diplomatic forums such as the United Nations. Russia is less important as an investor, but has taken a similar diplomatic line.

So how relevant does the West remain in Africa? And if its influence is waning then will that give African countries a chance to do a better job of solving problems their own way? Will it give a freer hand to leaders with little concern for democracy, human rights and government accountability?

What do you think?

      The extradition of former Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic on Wednesday to
face genocide charges in The Hague sends
a signal that the international community
means business in bringing fugitives to
justice. 
    Reinforcing the same message, 
Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor
of the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia, called again
for the arrest of Bosnian Serb wartime
commander Ratko Mladic. Like Karadzic,
Mladic is accused of  genocide over the
43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995
massacre of some 8,000 Muslims at
Srebrenica.

    This ought to ring alarm bells for Sudan’s president, Omar
Hassan al-Bashir, who is also accused of war crimes. But world
leaders are also sending other signals which may ease any
concerns he has that he may soon be arrested.
    Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC)
prosecutor, has charged Bashir with masterminding a campaign of
genocide in Darfur, killing 35,000 people and persecuting 2.5
million. But the U.N. Security Council is divided over his calls
for an arrest warrant against Bashir. Some countries hope the
ICC will halt any genocide indictment in the interests of peace,
fearing any attempt to arrest him could cause more bloodshed.
    Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa’s ambassador to the United
Nations, made this clear on Tuesday as the U.N Security Council
prepared to consider a South African and Libyan proposal that it
call on the ICC’s judges to refrain from taking any action.
    “We are not saying ’stop doing it’ to the prosecutor of the
ICC,” the ambassador said. 
    “We are saying, give peace a chance, can you just give it a
year, let’s see UNAMID deployed,” Kumalo said, referring to the
U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur.
    UNAMID’s mandate expires on Thursday and Britain has drafted
a resolution on extending the mandate until July 31, 2009. But
South Africa and Libya want to insert a paragraph calling for a
suspension of any ICC moves. Such moves suggest Bashir, who
denies the charges against him, is unlikely to be arrested any
time soon. 

   If arrested, Bashir would follow prominent figures such as Karadzic,
late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, former Liberian President
Charles Taylor and Congolese former rebel warlord and vice-president
Jean-Pierre Bemba into the dock.
    Taylor is accused by the U.N. -backed Special Court for Sierra
Leone of orchestrating rebel atrocities during Sierra Leone’s
1991-2002 conflict. Milosevic died in detention in 2006 before a
verdict was reached in his trial on genocide charges. Bemba is
accused by the ICC of leading Congolese rebels in a campaign
of rape and torture in the Central African Republic in 2002 and
2003. 
    The chances of Karadzic or Milosevic being arrested and
brought to trial initially seemed slim, but political changes in
Serbia — namely the appointment of a Western-leaning government
keen to join the European Union — helped secure his arrest.
    Bashir’s arrest is more complicated as he is a sitting head
of state. It also appears to depend heavily on political will
and political change — but are there any signs of this? Should 
Karadzic’s arrest and detention give Bashir any real cause for
concern?

On Friday I wrote that the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor was readying a genocide charge and arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.  It came to pass today. A defiant Khartoum has said it will not bend to the court and has warned of an eruption of violence; the opposition too has said the warrant could threaten peace. Is this a case of justice versus peace and do the two have to be irreconcilable?

Here’s Friday’s blog:

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court are readying arrest warrants for senior Sudanese officials, possibly even President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, sources at The Hague court have told Reuters. The Washington Post said it understood Bashir would face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Would the world’s first permanent international criminal court be wise to take on a serving president? There is a precedent - another war crimes court in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia,  issued an indictment for Slobodan Milosevic while he was still president.

Milosevic did finally appear before the court to answer the charges, although his trial was cut short by his death. Supporters of that court said bringing top commanders to justice was essential if the Balkans were to find lasting peace.

But Sudan is not Serbia. Sudan expert Alex da Waal has warned that going after Sudanese leaders could embolden rebels in Darfur and reignite conflict. International aid organisations operating in Sudan fear a backlash.

Would it be wiser to work with Sudan’s leaders for peace rather than pursuing them through the courts? And what chance of securing arrests even if warrants are issued?