From: Berhan Sium (eretrawi@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Aug 01 2008 - 12:58:21 EDT
U.N. to Keep Darfur Force, but U.S. Withholds Its Vote
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
New York Times, August 1, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/01/world/africa/01nations.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations Security Council extended the mandate for beleaguered peacekeeping troops in the Sudanese province of Darfur late Thursday, but the United States abstained from the 14-0 vote to protest what it saw as wobbly support for pursuing war crimes indictments in the conflict.
The language of the resolution sent the wrong signal to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan by mentioning African support for suspending efforts to indict him in the International Criminal Court, the United States said.
"This council cannot ignore the terrible crimes that have occurred throughout the conflict in Darfur," said Alejandro D. Wolff, the deputy permanent representative for the United States.
American diplomats singled out one paragraph in the preamble to the British-sponsored resolution which suggested that the Council take note of concerns among African countries about possible court action. The American position was that the resolution not draw any link, no matter how vague, between possible court action and the mandate for Unamid, the acronym for the peacekeeping force.
"We don't think it should be loaded up like a Christmas tree with a bunch of other topics," said Richard Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. "We made it clear from the beginning that trying to introduce the I.C.C. language into a simple roll-over resolution was problematic."
The language had already been heavily diluted from what was first proposed by Libya and South Africa, with the support of Russia and China, among others, that would have invoked Article 16 in the court charter, which allows the Security Council to suspend action by the court for a year.
Moscow and Beijing reiterated their positions after voting. China, which has about 300 engineers in the peacekeeping force, said its priority was to allow negotiations to proceed and, among other goals, to avoid putting its soldiers in harm's way. The indictment threatens to derail any future negotiations, Ambassador Wang Guangya suggested, by wrecking any trust between Sudan and the United Nations.
"No progress will be possible without the full cooperation of the Sudanese government," Mr. Wang said, calling the proposed indictment "an inappropriate decision made at an inappropriate time."
Mr. Wang said China would soon bring to the Security Council the idea of postponing any action by the international court.
He and the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, noted opposition to the proposed indictment from the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement. A meeting of African Union leaders earlier this month issued a communique saying that the court was unfairly concentrating on Africa and that pushing peace negotiations warranted suspending any action against Mr. Bashir.
African and Arab states have also suggested that the court. is not an evenhanded independent body, but a tool of the Western powers. Sudan's United Nations ambassador, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem, called the court prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, "a screwdriver in the workshop of double standards."
Given that the peacekeeping force relies heavily on contributions from African countries, the general sentiment was that some reference should be made to their concerns. Most countries accepted the idea that the fight over Article 16 could be postponed. Even Sudan endorsed that concept.
But the American position was that such a reference would send the wrong signal to Mr. Bashir that a deal might be possible. That position had the strong backing of activists and international law experts.
"They should get the language out," said Harold H. Koh, a professor of international law at Yale Law School and a former assistant secretary for human rights in the 1990s. "The question here is who is the bad actor. If the U.S. wants to keep the pressure on Bashir they don't want to suggest that somehow he is being unfairly targeted; he is not."
Activists dismiss the notion that Africa is a particular target, saying leaders there have asked for court investigations in some of their countries.
The haggling went on well into the night -- the vote came at 9:45 p.m. -- because by tradition votes to support peacekeeping forces are unanimous. Anything less than a 15-0 vote is considered to signal that the force does not have the Council's full support.
The force, the largest and most expensive in United Nations history, has had problems since its inception a year ago, fielding less than half its projected 26,000 members and lacking critical contributions like helicopters.
The United Nations estimates that the five-year conflict pitting rebel Darfur groups against the Sudanese government has left 300,000 people dead and 2.7 million displaced.
Meanwhile, in Sudan on Wednesday, two courts sentenced 22 Darfur rebels to death by hanging on Thursday for their involvement in a raid that reached the outskirts of the capital in May, lawyers told Reuters.
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