KHARTOUM: Arab League chief Amr Moussa was on Sunday flying to Khartoum with a plan aimed at stalling possible legal moves against Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir for alleged genocide in Darfur.
Al-Beshir was to receive Moussa at 7:30 pm, bolstered by an agreement from Arab foreign ministers to seek a political solution to the crisis sparked when the world court prosecutor sought an arrest warrant for Al-Beshir.
The Arab League on Saturday resolved to support Sudan, slammed International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo as unbalanced, and said Sudanese courts should judge those accused of war crimes during Darfur s five-year conflict.
Moreno-Ocampo accuses Al-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 Al-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.
Moussa 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 Haroun 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. Haroun 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 Al-Beshir for a year, renewable, warning that peace prospects would be severely undermined.
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.
Nothing is done now, actually, for the Security Council to take any action… Now we have the African Union, we have the Arab League… maybe in the coming few days you will hear about something like that, he said.
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 Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga told BBC television on Sunday that prosecuting Al-Beshir would not end the Darfur conflict.
I think that, basically, to try to exonerate people here and there or to appropriate blame is not going to resolve the issue of Darfur, he said.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said it was important that Sudanese justice move ahead on Darfur and that it was necessary for the UN Security Council to assume its responsibility to save stability in Sudan .
Khartoum rejects the ICC s jurisdiction, saying it would try alleged war criminals in its own courts.
Some of the Arab League s 22 members have said Moreno-Ocampo s move threatens peace hopes in Darfur, and fear that it sets a dangerous precedent.
They have also criticized his failure to charge Darfur rebels with war crimes.
Many Arabs also perceive an ICC bias whereby alleged war crimes by US troops in Iraq and by Israeli forces go uninvestigated.
