Arab League chief Amr Mussa headed on Sunday to Khartoum with a plan aimed at stalling possible legal moves against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, accused of masterminding genocide in Darfur.
Beshir was to receive Mussa late Sunday, bolstered by an accord from Arab foreign ministers to seek a political solution to the row sparked when the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor sought an arrest warrant for Beshir.
The Arab League on Saturday backed Sudan, slammed ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo as "unbalanced," and said Sudanese courts should try those accused of war crimes during Darfur's five-year conflict. Moreno-Ocampo accuses Beshir of personally instructing his forces to annihilate three non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur, masterminding murder, torture, pillaging and the use of rape to commit genocide.
The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed. It began when African ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.
On Monday, Moreno-Ocampo asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Beshir's arrest. If granted, which it is unlikely to be for months, it would be the first issued by The Hague-based court against a sitting head of state. Mussa has refused to divulge details of the plan before his meetings in Khartoum, but the Arab League on Saturday urged Sudan to give suspected Darfur war criminals trials that were not a "sham."
According to the ICC statute, if credible trials of alleged war criminals are held domestically the court's own charges are dropped. Sudan's two other ICC indictees, current cabinet minister Ahmed Harun and Arab militia leader Ali Kosheib, had both been set to face trial in Sudanese courts on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Kosheib's trial was indefinitely suspended in March 2007. Harun was briefly detained and released last October for lack of evidence. Sudanese diplomatic efforts now focus on persuading the UN Security Council to freeze any prosecution of Beshir for a year, renewable, warning that peace prospects would be severely undermined.
Egypt's official MENA news agency, quoting Sudanese deputy foreign minister Al Samani al-Wassila, said Mussa would suggest to Beshir "the possibility of holding an international conference." Such a conference would "gather all forces and Sudanese and international parties to solve the problem of Darfur... and to close the file in a definite manner," it added.
Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha was sent by Beshir to Libya to rally Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi's support against the ICC, the state news agency JANA reported on Sunday. Taha briefed Kadhafi on the serious consequences the granting of the warrant could have on "the stability of Sudan and the region," the agency added.
State minister for foreign affairs, Ali Karti, told reporters in Khartoum that information could soon emerge about Sudan approaching the Security Council to invoke article 16 of the Rome Statute. The Security Council has the power to adopt a resolution requesting that the ICC suspend its procedures for 12 months.
Western members of the 15-strong council have called consideration of such a freeze premature, given that the ICC judges have not yet formally issued any arrest warrant. Sudan is also banking on strong support from the African Union, which can also put such a request to the Security Council, and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Egypt, meanwhile, called on Sunday for an international conference to find a political solution to the conflict in Sudan's Darfur region, state media reported. The conference should be held "in co-ordination with the UN, permanent members of the Security Council and countries influential in Africa," the MENA news agency quoted Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit as saying.