UNITED NATIONS, September 17 -- The Sudanese trip of the UN Security Council, initially slated for early October, is in jeopardy of being canceled. Sudan has indicated that if the Council visits, a meeting and photo opportunity with the country's President would be required.
This week several Permanent Five members of the Council told Inner City Press that their Ambassadors could not meet with Omar al Bashir, due to his indictment by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and genocide.
While this prohibition is presented as a matter of law, three of the Permanent Five are not members of the ICC, and therefore appear under no prohibition from meeting with indictees. Thus it is a matter of choice, of politics and of perception.
On September 16, a self described senior US official told Inner City Press that
“With respect to a potential Security Council mission [to Sudan], we've talked informally in the Security Council since the beginning of the year [including] about the obvious complication that such a trip poses. You guys know that the Security Council referred the issue of Sudan to the International Criminal Court, and there the outstanding indictments, and that's a political fact. We have some legal realities that can't be ignored. We're still frankly talking amongst ourselves about how to deal with them. And it's not clear whether they can be dealt with adequately to enable a trip in the near term.”
A non-Permanent member of the Council that is a member of the ICC but say it would, given the stakes for Sudanese civilians, be willing to go and meet Bashir complained to Inner City Press that so far the discussion of this issue has been confined not even to the full P-5, but rather to the assigned leaders of different legs of the trip as planned: the US (for South Sudan) and the UK (for Darfur).
"Real diplomats don't run scared of photo ops when people are threatened with death," the complainant argued to Inner City Press.
Inner City Press asked the senior US official about this concern and the response was that “We always have conversations about P-5 and those conversations always end up in the larger Council.” The US official added that of course, approval of any trip would require the involvement of all 15 member of the Council. But cancellation of the planned trip can be done by a mere two members?
With the high profile September 24 meeting on Sudan at the UN coming closer, some wonder if with the involvement of Sudanese Vice President Taha and US President Obama, the stumbling blocks could be overcome.
Among the suggestions are that some Ambassadors simply stay in their hotel while others meet Bashir, or that they attend but not shake Bashir's hand.
Inner City Press covered the Council's 2008 trip to Sudan (as well as Kenya, Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Cote d'Ivoire) and witnessed then US Deputy Permanent Representative Alejandro Wolff, UK Permanent Representative John Sawers and French PR Jean Maurice Ripert meeting with Bashir and other Sudanese officials.
That was then; this is now. Watch this site.
