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South Africa Faces Dilemma Over AU Decision To Shelter Al-Bashir
8 July 2009
The South African government faces a dilemma over the African Union summit's decision on Friday not to help the International Criminal Court (ICC) to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The decision by the AU's highest body, the assembly of heads of state and government - who included President Jacob Zuma - at the summit in Sirte, Libya, directly contradicts South Africa's obligations - as a country that has ratified the ICC's founding Rome Statute - to arrest al-Bashir as a fugitive from the ICC and hand him over to the court in The Hague.
South African government officials acknowledged yesterday that the summit decision had put Pretoria in a difficult position. On Sunday, Botswana's government formally rejected the AU summit decision and reaffirmed its "treaty obligations to fully co-operate with the ICC in the arrest and transfer of the president of Sudan to the ICC." But South African government officials said this sort of statement was not an option for South African, which was deeply involved in attempts to resolve the conflicts in South Sudan and in Darfur. Part of South Africa's quandary is that it feels the ICC has not met the AU halfway over the al-Bashir indictment. Officials said South Africa respected the ICC's efforts to end impunity for war crimes in Darfur, but the ICC had made no effort to engage the AU to co-ordinate with the AU's efforts to end the fighting in Darfur. The ICC had not discussed the AU's call for the UN Security Council to suspend the indictment of al-Bashir for a year, as it was entitled to do, to give time for the AU's own efforts to resolve the issue. "How is it going to help the ongoing peace processes in South Sudan and Darfur, if al-Bashir is behind bars?" one official said. "We need him to take those processes forward." The officials said, however, that the AU summit decision not to help arrest al-Bashir would not take effect until it had been ratified by South Africa's Parliament. The South African officials also acknowledged that they had to battle, as before, to curb Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's eagerness to transform the continent swiftly into a "United States of Africa" with a single government. The leaders passed a resolution to transform the AU's secretariat, the AU Commission, into an AU Authority that would co-ordinate regional defence, trade and foreign policy. Gaddafi praised this move as a big step towards his goal of a USA, saying Africa would now speak with one voice, but diplomats said the decision would not give the AU Authority as much power as Gaddafi implied as it could act only if authorised to do so by member states. The decision to create the AU Authority would also have to be ratified by the AU national member states. In South Africa, officials said the country had helped reject a proposal by Gaddafi that the AU adopt a flag of his design that looked very much like a USA flag, with 53 stars, one for each of the AU's member states. Diplomatic sources said they believed that South Africa and like-minded states were hoping to play for time until Gaddafi handed on the AU chairmanship in January - "to someone who can really advance Africa's agenda". A South African official said the African people were short-changed at the summit because the key item - a plan to boost agriculture and food production - was overshadowed by the ICC row.
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