Egypt warns ICC against arrest warrant for Bashir (Roundup)

Feb 22, 2009, 15:04 GMT

Cairo - Egypt on Sunday warned that international efforts to bring Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to trial for crimes against humanity in Darfur could endanger efforts to strike a peace deal to end fighting between the government and rebel groups.

Bashir met with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak in Cairo on Sunday amid speculation that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague may soon issue a warrant for the arrest of the Sudanese president for his alleged role in what ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has called genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

'Mubarak has warned many international officials he met recently that an ICC move against Bashir will have a negative political impact on Sudan in general, and Darfur in particular,' Mubarak's spokesman, Suleiman Awad, told reporters after the meeting.

Awad asked the criminal court to 'stop politicizing this issue,' and said that there had been 'many examples where the ICC disregarded severe violations of human rights, the most recent of which was before and during the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip.'

Awad's comments were the latest in a series of similar warnings from Cairo to the ICC.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, in remarks carried by Cairo's official Middle East News Agency on Saturday, warned international governments and institutions against 'unbalanced pressures' against Sudan.

Aboul-Gheit and Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman were in Khartoum on February 14 for talks with the Sudanese. At the end of that visit, Egypt's ambassador to Sudan, said it 'sent a message to all parties that Egypt was standing beside Sudan' on the question of a possible ICC arrest warrant for Bashir.

The Egyptian officials' visit to Khartoum followed press reports, later denied by the ICC, that a warrant for Bashir's arrest had already been issued.