From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Sun Jul 27 2008 - 12:17:47 EDT
Charging Sudan's Beshir would wreck Darfur peace: Mbeki
July 26, 2008
JOHANNESBURG (AFP) — South African President Thabo Mbeki said
Saturday that Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir must not be prosecuted
for war crimes, for fear of upsetting the peace process in Darfur.
Mbeki said Beshir's continued presence as head of state was also required to assist Sudan's general post-civil war security.
"It
is important that both of those processes should proceed and both of
them require the very active participation of President Beshir," Mbeki
told South African public television in an interview given Friday in
Bordeaux, France, where he had attended a European Union-South Africa
summit.
"I don't know how they would do that if an International
Criminal Court says here's a person who has been indicted, because they
then must stop interacting with him because this is a wanted criminal,
and I don't know how you then implement all of those things."
Mbeki,
criticised on the international stage for being soft on Zimbabwe's
President Robert Mugabe during formal mediation over the political
crisis there, told SABC-TV he was ready to meet with Beshir to discuss
the consequences of ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo's call last
week for judges to issue a warrant for Beshir's arrest.
Moreno-Ocampo
accuses Beshir of instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab
ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and
the use of rape to commit genocide.
A decision could take several
months, but if granted it would be the first warrant issued by The
Hague-based court against a sitting head of state.
A spokesman
for the South African presidency told AFP Saturday that meetings were
scheduled for the coming weeks between the South African and Sudanese
governments, without specifying at which level.
In Bordeaux on
Friday, the EU and South Africa jointly called on Beshir to make a
"gesture" to show it had understood the prosecutor's message.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iaJrzGYzBt7QzXkAHljhTHxCSwsg
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