South Africa fully supports the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s decision to seek summonses for two suspects accused of war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region, a top government official said on Wednesday.
But Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad told a media briefing in Cape Town it was too early to tell what effect the ICC action would have on long-term peace prospects in Sudan.
”These are early days. We are now trying to contact the Sudanese government, trying to contact the ICC and trying to understand what are the processes and what implications this will have on the broader comprehensive peace agreement in Sudan,” Pahad said.
ICC prosecutors on Tuesday asked pre-trial judges to issue summonses for the first two Darfur war-crimes suspects: former state interior minister Ahmed Haroun, currently Sudan’s State Humanitarian Affairs Minister, and militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-al-Rahman, known as Ali Kushayb.
Sudan has said the ICC has no authority in the case and no jurisdiction to try any Sudanese.
South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse and one of its chief diplomatic voices, currently holds a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and will become its chair in March.
The Security Council has passed a resolution approving 22 500 UN peacekeepers for Darfur but Sudan has not agreed to the deployment.
Some have suggested Khartoum fears the UN troops could be used to arrest those named in ICC warrants.
Experts say about 200 000 people have been killed and another 2,5-million displaced from Darfur since 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government of President Omar al-Bashir. Khartoum says about 9 000 people have died.
The Islamic government of Sudan stands accused of arming pro-government militias, known as Janjaweed, who are blamed for some of the worst atrocities in Darfur.
The charge has been denied by the government, which stands accused of genocide by the United States — a label rejected by Sudan and the African Union, which has 7 000 peacekeepers in western Sudan where one rebel faction has signed a peace deal with the government.
Pahad said South Africa fully supports the ICC process.
”Once the ICC has declared what will happen then the processes will start, and people who have been named, and others are going be named, will then be sought by extradition,” he said.
”Any decisions that come from there [ICC], we will have to comply,” he added. — Reuters