Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa
www.innercitypress.com/unsc5khartoum060508.html
KHARTOUM, June 5 -- The UN Security Council Ambassadors were dressed-down by Sudanese President Al Bashir on Thursday, in harsher terms than the Ambassadors afterwards acknowledged to the press. After Bashir had finished his opening speech, all journalists were asked to leave, so that the Council members' questions and Basher's answered would stay secret.
Surprisingly soon after this closed-door meeting began, the Ambassadors emerged, some of them grim-faced, and trooped out to their bus. Sudan's Ambassador to the UN told Inner City Press that the procurement issue sprang directly from the PAE / Lockheed Martin no-bid contract. He said that his president had told the Ambassadors that Sudan would never turn over any of its people to the ICC, particularly when a member of the Security Council also doesn't accept the jurisdiction of the ICC.
Back at the Rotana Hotel, Inner City Press asked if President Bashir had spoken about a member denying ICC jurisdiction, and if so how the Council had responded. UK Ambassador Sawers, gesturing to U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff, said he'd leave the response to the member in question. There are others, Amb. Wolff noted. He then said that since it involved a Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, Sudan is required to comply.
Inner City Press asked for a response to a more specific fairness question: since the U.S. has a veto on the Security Council, it could never be referred to the ICC by the Council. But that is how Sudan has been referred. Their reasons and our reasons to argue jurisdiction are different, Wolff said. And then the official press conference was over, with nary a mention of the "local procurement" issue which President al Bashir had raised even in the opening meeting.
Sources who were inside the meeting tell Inner City Press that Bashir specifically attacked the PAE - Lockheed contract in comments to the Council. Why choose an American company to build camps? he asked. Since the U.S. says that its companies can't do business in Sudan, why is the UN assisting a violation of a sanctions regime? He asked under what legal regime this was done, and he did not get an answer.
Bashir also asked, even if Sudan does allow Thai peacekeepers to deploy, why they would be brought in on American planes? Since both the Lockheed contract and the current air transport plans are attributable to the previous chief of the UN Department of Field Support, it has been suggested that the issues be revisited by the new DFS head, Susana Malcorra.
On the ICC, Bashir said pointedly that Sudan learned it disregard from its "elders," the United States. Bashir asked why, if the U.S. could invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and fire missiles into Somalia, Sudan can't act against Chad-backed rebels who make an attack on Khartoum. The Council wanly tried to convince him to forgive, in essence, the JEM. This doesn't seem likely.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/unsc5khartoum060508.html
