Sudan president charged with genocide in Darfur

By MIKE CORDER, Associated Press Writer,

Omar Al Bashir

Mon Jul 14, 4:53 PM ET

The prosecutor for the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant Monday for Sudan’s president on charges of waging a campaign of genocide and rape in Darfur, a high-risk strategy that could backfire against the people in the war-torn desert region.

The indictment marked the first time prosecutors at the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal have issued charges against a sitting head of state, though President Omar al-Bashir was unlikely to face trial any time soon.

Sudan denounced the indictment as a political stunt, saying it would ignore any arrest order and was considering all options, including an unspecified military response. One Sudanese lawmaker said his government could no longer guarantee the safety of U.N. staff in the troubled region.

Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo filed 10 charges against al-Bashir related to a campaign of extermination of three Darfur tribes that the U.N. says claimed 300,000 lives and driven 2.5 million people from their homes. A three-judge panel was expected to take two to three months to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant.

Human rights groups welcomed the prosecutor’s move, but cautioned it could provoke a violent backlash from Sudan, while offering little prospect that al-Bashir will be arrested and sent for trial to The Hague. The court, which began work in 2002, has no enforcement arm and relies on governments to act as its police force.

“The prosecutor’s legal strategy also poses major risks for the fragile peace and security environment in Sudan, with a real chance of greatly increasing the suffering of very large numbers of its people,” the Brussels-based International Crisis Group said in a statement.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, said al-Bashir was weighing all options, including a military response.

Al-Bashir likely will attend the U.N. General Assembly in New York in September, and Sudan would consider any attempt to arrest him a declaration of war, Mohamed said.

In Khartoum, the deputy parliament speaker, Mohammed al-Hassan al-Ameen, warned Sudan was unable to guarantee “the safety of any individual.”

“The U.N. asks us to keep its people safe, but how can we guarantee their safety when they want to seize our head of state?” al-Ameen said on state TV.

Sudan’s anger could undermine talks to resolve the decades-old enmity between north and south Sudan, and endanger efforts by relief workers and an ill-equipped U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force to protect 2.5 million people living in refugee camps, the Crisis Group said.

“These are significant risks, particularly given that the likelihood of actually executing any warrant issued against al-Bashir is remote, at least in the short term,” it added.

Al-Bashir, who has ruled Sudan for 19 years, appears invulnerable in his capital, though an international warrant would leave him open to arrest outside the country’s borders, restricting his travel and putting him in a category akin to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, who faces a U.N. travel ban.

Still, African nations have rarely taken action against one of their leaders, and al-Bashir is likely to feel few constraints on his own continent.

On Monday, the Sudanese leader appeared at an elaborate law-signing ceremony in Khartoum, where dozens of lawmakers, diplomats and military leaders paraded past him cheering. Al-Bashir waved a wooden cane and smiled as advisers danced and a brass band played nationalist songs.

Moreno-Ocampo acknowledged the risks posed by an indictment, but said he had an obligation to pursue the president.

“I am a prosecutor doing a judicial case,” he said. “In the camps, al-Bashir’s forces kill the men and rape the women. He wants to end the history of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa people. I don’t have the luxury to look away. I have evidence.”

The 10 charges filed against al-Bashir include three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes.

The Sudanese Liberation Movement-Unity, a Darfur rebel group, welcomed the move and offered to help arrest and extradite any war criminals from Sudan — though it is unlikely the rebels would stand any chance of arresting al-Bashir.

If Sudan refuses to turn over al-Bashir, it will be up to the U.N. Security Council to press Khartoum to cooperate, something it has so far failed to do.

“Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo’s charges against al-Bashir underscore the need for the U.N. Security Council to finally act decisively with a comprehensive strategy for Sudan,” said Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition.

Achieving unanimous backing in the Security Council for any action against Sudan will be fraught with problems since two of its permanent members, China and Russia, are Sudan’s allies.

Both are accused of arming Sudan, but both also approved the council’s 2005 resolution ordering Moreno-Ocampo to investigate crimes in Darfur.

In a statement, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said he “expects that the government of Sudan will continue to cooperate fully with the United Nations in Sudan, while fulfilling its obligation to ensure the safety and security of all United Nations personnel and property.”

The war in Darfur began in 2003 as a crackdown on anti-government rebels who complained their arid region was neglected by Khartoum. The U.N. estimates 300,000 people have died, directly from attacks or indirectly through starvation.

Moreno-Ocampo said Sudan’s forces and their janjaweed militia proxies now deliberately target civilians in villages and camps rather than the rebels, sometimes even bypassing nearby rebel encampments.

They destroy villages, rape women and girls and leave the homeless to starve in the desert or suffer malnutrition in camps, he alleged.

“These 2.5 million people are in camps. They (al-Bashir’s forces) don’t need gas chambers because the desert will kill them,” Moreno-Ocampo told a news conference, drawing comparison’s with the Nazi Holocaust.

One witness cited by prosecutors said rape was woven into the fabric of life in Darfur.

“Maybe around 20 men rape one woman. These things are normal for us here in Darfur,” said the statement from the unidentified witness cited by Moreno-Ocampo.

The prosecutor said mass rape was producing a generation of so-called “janjaweed babies” and “an explosion of infanticide” by victims.

Moreno-Ocampo said an arrest warrant for al-Bashir would present the world a chance to stop the killings.

“We are dealing with a genocide. Is it easy to stop? No. Do we need to stop? Yes,” he told the AP in an interview Monday before publicly unveiling his indictment.

“The international community failed in the past, failed to stop Rwanda genocide, failed to stop Balkans crimes,” he added. “So this time, the new thing is there is a court, an independent court … which is saying, ‘This is a genocide.’”

Other U.N.-created international tribunals have charged Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Liberian President Charles Taylor with war crimes while they were still in office. Milosevic died in his cell in March 2006. Taylor is currently on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

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UN Somalia humanitarian chief warns of catastrophe

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, April 19 (Reuters) – A catastrophe is looming in Somalia, where 100,000 people fleeing fighting in Mogadishu lack food and clean water and a diarrhoea epidemic has killed more than 400, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for the country said on Thursday.

Cholera has struck hundreds in the Somali capital in the past month, and the worst fighting in a decade and the detention of aid workers have made it impossible to reach U.N. warehouses or land at the city airport, Eric Laroche told a news briefing.

Unless the fighting halts and aid agencies get access to those displaced by the conflict, “a humanitarian crisis is going to turn into a catastrophe and very soon,” he said.

Fighting between Ethiopian troops and Somali insurgents in Mogadishu flared again on Thursday, killing at least 12 people, witnesses said.

The insurgents, drawn from the local Hawiye clan and a militant Islamist movement, are fighting the interim government, its Ethiopian military backers and African Union peacekeepers for control of the city.

Four days of ferocious fighting killed 1,000 people in March and a truce since then has failed to prevent sporadic clashes.

An epidemic of acute watery diarrhoea is sweeping the Horn of Africa nation and is likely to worsen in the forthcoming rainy season, Laroche said.

Some 12,429 cases have been detected since the start of the year and 414 people have died, most of them children, he said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) has treated some 800 cases of cholera in Mogadishu in the last month alone, more than in the previous decade, he added.

“Unless people have access to treatment and oral rehydration salts they are not going to survive,” Laroche said, adding that the interim government was not helping with access or proposing the use of other airports for aid.

Some 218,000 people have fled the capital since Feb. 1, including 100,000 staying in Lower and Middle Shabelle who are at greatest risk as they are cut off from aid supplies.

Most of Somalia remains “chronically insecure, therefore people are extremely vulnerable”, Laroche said.

“Migration means a lot of people are going to be in need of food soon. For the time being, only 40 percent of 50,000 malnourished children are reached. It is not enough.”

A U.N. World Food Programme convoy was turned back on April 7 from Afgoye, where 40,000 displaced people are staying, on the pretext that it had not been cleared, he said. He hoped talks with government officials in Baidoa on Monday would lead to better access.

The United Nations has increased its humanitarian appeal for Somalia to $262.3 million from $237 million, said Laroche, who presented it to donor nations at a meeting in Geneva. (Additional reporting by Sahal Abdulle in Mogadishu)

Government aircraft bomb village in Darfur-rebels

KHARTOUM, April 19 (Reuters) – A Sudanese rebel group said government aircraft destroyed a village in northern Darfur in an air strike on Thursday, inflicting casualties.

An army spokesman said he was not aware of such an attack.

Ibrahim al-Helu, a commander in the Sudan Liberation Army rebel faction, said the air strike totally destroyed the village of Jemmeiza.

“There are casualties but darkness is making it difficult to reach them or know their number,” he told Reuters by telephone.

“A lot of civilians have fled the village. Some have gone missing,” he said.

Sudan’s government has strongly denied accusations made in a confidential United Nations report that it was flying weapons and other military equipment into the war-torn Darfur region in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The report said the government was using planes painted white to resemble U.N. aircraft to bomb and carry out surveillance of villages in Darfur.

“The government wants to establish peace in Darfur, not to ignite the conflict,” Sudan’s official news agency quoted Presidential Adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail as saying.

The U.N. says at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced since the Darfur conflict flared in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government, charging it with neglect. Khartoum says only 9,000 have died.

Chadian president visits Gabon Chadian president visits Gabon

Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno arrived on Tuesday for a state visit, of which the duration was yet to know.

On his arrival at the Leon Mba International Airport, the Chadian president was received by his Gabonese counterpart Omar Bongo Ondimba.

Recently, Chadian political leaders’ visits to Gabonese capital of Libreville have increased in frequency. Last Friday, President Ondimba held discussions with former Chadian president Goukouni Weddeye who had been overthrown by Hissene Habre. Habre was later overthrown by the current Chadian President Itno.

Weddeye who lives in exile in Algeria has openly called on Ondimba to intervene in the search for a solution to the crisis which is rocking Chad. He particularly appealed to the Gabonese president to mediate talks between Itno and other Chadian political leaders as well as various rebel forces.

Source: Xinhua

Ivory Coast President Offers Amnesty as Peace Plan Advances

By VOA News
13 April 2007

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo has offered amnesty for crimes against the state, as part of efforts to boost a rapidly advancing peace plan.

The new law unveiled Friday pardons all Ivorians living in the country and abroad who committed violations of national security between September 17, 2000 and the present.

People who committed war crimes or economic crimes can still be prosecuted.

Mr. Gbagbo and former rebel leader Guillaume Soro reached a peace agreement last month after years of failed United Nations peace plans.

The deal is aimed at reuniting Ivory Coast, which has been divided between a rebel-held north and government-controlled south since a 2002 civil war.

This week, international peacekeepers maintaining a buffer zone said they plan to withdraw in stages, beginning Monday.

Last week, Mr. Soro was named prime minister in a new government.

Ivory Coast Peacekeepers to Begin Pulling Out

By Nico Colombant
Dakar
12 April 2007

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International peacekeepers in Ivory Coast say they will withdraw slowly from the buffer zone that separates northern rebels and the Ivorian army. The process of reunifying divided Ivory Coast will begin with a ceremony Monday. VOA’s Nico Colombant reports from our West Africa bureau in Dakar.

The commander of U.N. forces, Marcel Amoussou says the withdrawal of peacekeepers from a zone that marked the division of Ivory Coast is significant.

“It is a very important decision in the peace process in Cote d’Ivoire,” he said. “Many of the [Ivorian] security forces will take over the security and then responsibility in this zone.”

General Amoussou says the handover will take place in stages.

“Some months, we will have to support them because there is a lack of confidence and we will help them renew confidence among them,” he said.

Rebels and the Ivorian army are setting up what they call an integrated military command center, following the latest peace deal reached in Burkina Faso.

The aim is to set up joint brigade centers, and joint rebel-army patrols in the buffer zone. French rapid reaction forces and U.N. troops are to withdraw over the next few months and set up observation posts along the dividing line between rebel zones and government run areas.

General Amoussou says this will allow U.N. troops to deploy elsewhere to help with other parts of the peace deal.

“We will redeploy our troops in the country to provide security all over the country, to secure the borders and also to deal with the key processes, the DDR (EDS: disarmament, demobilization and reinsertion of fighters), the identification, and then the elections. So for all these key processes there is a need for U.N. troops in the country,” he said.

Despite previous failed peace deals, some of which were followed by renewed violence, General Amoussou says he believes in this one.

“There is no military risk, but let us say we have to remain vigilant,” he said.

A French military official told VOA, the joint integrated command is not ready technically or logistically to ensure security in the buffer zone. But he says French troops will be ready to leave when there are guarantees security can be maintained in the ethnically-diverse and tense region.

Northern-based rebels have been fighting for more inclusive elections, in which more northerners can take part. Their leader, Guillaume Soro, was recently named prime minister in a new government, sharing power with President Laurent Gbagbo, whose term in office has already been extended twice due to delayed elections.

 

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Chad Acknowledges Troops Crossed Into Sudan, Clashed With Sudanese Forces

By VOA News
10 April 2007

Chad’s government has acknowledged that its forces crossed into Sudanese territory Monday and clashed with Sudanese troops.

Reversing a previous denial of the incident, Chad’s Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor said Tuesday that Chadian troops had crossed the border to pursue rebels they had been fighting in eastern Chad.

He said the clash occurred when Chad’s troops made contact with Sudan’s forces, whom he said had been deployed to protect the rebels’ retreat.

Sudan’s military says 17 of its soldiers were killed in the clash, and that its troops forced the Chadians back across the border.

Chad and Sudan have repeatedly accused each other of supporting the other country’s rebel movements. Cross-border raids and incidents have continued despite mediation efforts by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Both countries have refused the deployment of international peacekeepers on their border.

 

Rebel Leader Takes Over as Ivory Coast’s New Prime Minister

 

By Phuong Tran
Dakar
05 April 2007

 Guillaume Soro was sworn in Wednesday and is now in the process of choosing more than 30 members to serve in his new government . They will come from rebel forces, unarmed opposition parties and Mr. Gbagbo’s Ivorian Popular Front.

Mr. Soro was appointed prime minister last week by President Gbagbo. The move was part of the latest plan to reunite the divided West African nation.

But the director of Africa programs for the International Crisis Group, Francois Grignon, says Mr. Soro will have to become accustomed to facing political opposition.

“He is now put in a situation where he is one politico among others,” he said. “There is competition, obviously, with the unarmed opposition, with the key other Ivorian leaders such as [Alassane] Ouattara and [Henri] Konan Bedie from the other parties.”

Under the agreement reached last month in Ouagadougou, election will be organized later this year. Cisse Sindou, deputy chief of Soro’s rebel group, the New Forces, says other opposition parties should not feel threatened.

“We always told them that we are the only ones that would bring fair elections because we are not candidates,” he said.

“We will not let [President] Gbagbo do anything unfairly to them because we are in the same party. We are the referee and have the intention to stay a good referee so the game will be fair,” he added.

Analyst Grignon says Soro will also face, what he calls, a cunning political rival in President Gbagbo.

“President Gbagbo is going to play his cards as usual, which is to divide and rule,” he said. “Which is to undermine whatever support Soro may have with other members of the opposition in order to have his will. “

Deputy rebel chief Sindou dismisses this potential threat to Soro’s power.

“Everybody thinks [President] Gbagbo is [the] strategic one. But do not underestimate Forces Nouvelles [New Forces rebels] also. We have been ruling 60 percent of the country [for] five years. We have gained some confidence and some experience. And we know [Mr.] Gbagbo better than anyone else. We know him for more than 20 years,” he said.

Ivory Coast has been divided into a rebel-held north and government-controlled south since late 2002. U.N. and French peacekeeping forces patrol a buffer zone that separates the two sides. Last month’s peace deal calls for reunification of the country and free and fair elections. Polls have been delayed twice since 2005.

One of the key rebel demands has been that many Ivorian northerners, now treated as second class citizens, get the right to vote.

 

 

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) — Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been released after police detained him at his party headquarters, police said on Wednesday.

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) — Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been released after police detained him at his party headquarters, police said on Wednesday.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had not been arrested. Ten other MDC officials were arrested, however, on suspicion of being connected with a spate of petrol bombings.

The MDC said heavily armed riot police had stormed the MDC’s headquarters and detained Tsvangirai on Wednesday as African leaders gathered in Tanzania to debate Zimbabwe’s escalating political crisis.

The arrests brought immediate condemnation from Britain, the former colonial power, and from the European Union.

Police said they had no information on the arrests, but confirmed officers were looking for people connected to a string of petrol bomb attacks which President Robert Mugabe says are part of an opposition terror campaign to drive him from power.

The MDC said that before the arrests, Tsvanigirai was going to hold a news conference “on the escalating and systemic campaign of violence and intimidation” by Mugabe’s government.

Government sources say expect more arrests

Government sources said more people were likely to be arrested in the coming days, including opposition politicians and journalists the authorities accuse of trying to incite a military coup against Mugabe.

“Some people have just gone too far, talking and writing recklessly and they are going to be held to account,” one source said.

The raid increased pressure on African leaders to use a special summit beginning in Tanzania on Wednesday to censure Mugabe, who has faced a firestorm of criticism for violently cracking down on opponents of his 27-year rule.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was among the first to criticize the latest arrests, saying the government appeared determined to intimidate.

“I strongly urge Mugabe and the Zimbabwean regime to heed the calls made by so many of the international community and their African neighbors to stop the oppression of the Zimbabwean people and respect their human rights,” she said in a statement.( Watch Mugabe claim “police have the right to bash” )

European Union president Germany said it was “deeply concerned” at the arrests while the European Parliament said it was time to end the “brutality” in Zimbabwe.

“The Southern African community has to react,” said Glenys Kinnock, who chairs the joint EU-Africa, Caribbean, Pacific parliamentary assembly.

Political observers agree that the special two-day Tanzania summit will be a test for the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC), accused in some quarters of not flexing its muscle against Mugabe’s government.

Analysts doubt African neighbors will take tough line

But despite the latest crackdown, political analysts said Mugabe’s regional colleagues were unlikely to follow Western calls for a tougher line — at least publicly.

“I don’t think there is going to be the kind of public condemnation that some Western countries are calling for, and I am sure Mugabe will be happy with that,” said Eldred Masunungure, a political science professor at Harare’s University of Zimbabwe.

In South Africa, the parliament held a snap debate on Zimbabwe where opposition parties demanded that President Thabo Mbeki’s government take a stronger line on Mugabe, a man still regarded as a liberation hero by many Africans.

“The goodwill which he earned and deserved has been dissipated by the cruelty, the vindictiveness and the inhumanity he has shown. This man is no longer a democrat,” said Douglas Gibson of the official opposition Democratic Alliance.

South African Deputy Foreign Minister Sue van der Merwe said the only way forward was through dialogue.

Before heading to Tanzania, Mugabe attended a meeting of his ruling ZANU-PF party’s politburo, which local media has speculated could discuss whether to back his bid for an extended presidential term despite the country’s gathering problems.

Mugabe, 83, has suggesting moving presidential elections back to 2010 — giving him two more years in office — or simply standing as the ZANU-PF candidate for another six year term if polls are held as scheduled next year.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Chad names former rebel chief as defence minister

N’DJAMENA, March 4 (Reuters) – Chad’s new prime minister named former rebel leader Mahamat Nour Abdelkerim as his defence minister on Sunday, just two months after he signed a peace deal to end his uprising against President Idriss Deby.  

Nour led the United Front for Democratic Change (FUC) which launched a raid on the Chadian capital N’Djamena in April in which hundreds of people were killed, but factional feuds have since split his movement. He signed the peace deal in late December in Tripoli, under the mediation of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and called on other rebel leaders fighting a low-intensity war in Chad’s east to lay down their weapons. They dismissed his appeal.  

Nour’s appointment came after Nouradine Delwa Kassire took over as Chad’s prime minister following the death of his predecessor from a heart attack on Feb. 23.  

Former FUC spokesman Laona Gong Raoul was named Government Secretary General in charge of relations with National Assembly, another cabinet post. In all, nine new ministers entered the government.

Deby, who won a fresh five-year term at elections in May which were boycotted by the opposition, has faced mounting opposition to his 17-year rule in the arid, landlocked central African oil producer.