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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Nov 27 2010 - 19:15:54 EST
Sudan's Bashir will attend Africa-EU summit -Mbeki
Sat Nov 27, 2010 11:30pm GMT
* Attendance will dismay EU delegates
* ICC arrest warrants have limited Bashir's travel
* Mbeki presents proposals to settle Abyei dispute
KHARTOUM, Nov 27 (Reuters) - Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir,
wanted on war crimes charges, will attend an African-European summit in
Libya next week, former South African President Thabo Mbeki said on
Saturday.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Bashir
alleging he masterminded genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity
during the country's seven-year conflict in the Darfur region.
Libya, which is hosting the Africa-European Union summit on Monday and
Tuesday, is not a member of the Hague-based court and is under no obligation
to arrest Bashir once he enters its territory.
However, his attendance would cause a diplomatic dilemma for representatives
of the EU, all of whose members have signed the court's charter and are
bound to cooperate with it and enforce its arrest warrants.
Mbeki spoke to reporters at the end of a meeting in Khartoum with the
Sudanese leader and the president of semi-autonomous south Sudan, Salva
Kiir.
"There is the summit meeting of the African Union and the European Union in
Libya ... President Bashir has to go there for that summit which will be
followed immediately by the summit meeting of the peace and security council
of the African Union," he said.
African Union heads of state last year voted not to cooperate with the ICC
indictments and Bashir has visited Kenya and Chad, both of them court
members.
However, the warrants have severely limited his travel and many Western
diplomats have tried to minimise their contacts with Bashir and other wanted
officials inside Sudan.
Mbeki met Bashir and Kiir to try and work out an agreement over the
ownership of Sudan's disputed Abyei region, one of the biggest stumbling
blocks in peace negotiations between the north and the oil-producing south.
DECADES OF CIVIL WAR
The people of Abyei were promised a referendum on whether to joint the north
or the south in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between
the two parts of the country.
With six weeks to go before the scheduled start of the vote, northern and
southern leaders have not agreed on the membership of a committee to
organise the plebiscite and remain at loggerheads over who has the right to
vote.
Political analysts have said there is a risk both sides could return to
conflict over the area and a series of other disputes.
Mbeki said he presented both leaders with proposals on how to resolve the
Abyei dispute, but declined to give details. Bashir and Kiir promised to
respond next week, he added.
"We were very pleased with the commitment that the parties have shown to
look at these things in detail and respond in detail with a view to finding
a speedy solution," Mbeki said.
The Abyei vote is scheduled to start on Jan. 9, the same day as a separate
and equally sensitive vote on whether the whole of the south should declare
independence or remain part of Sudan.
The theme of the Africa-EU summit will be "Investment, Economic Growth and
Job Creation". (Reporting by Khaled Abdel Aziz, writing by Andrew Heavens;
editing by Andrew Dobbie)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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