If the International Criminal Court (ICC) decides to indict Sudan’s president for crimes in Darfur it could ruin a peace process that ended two decades of civil war, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday.
Khartoum has already said that peace in its war-racked Darfur region would be impossible if the UN Security Council does not stop the ICC from indicting Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide and other war crimes in Darfur.
Sudanese officials have suggested that UN-African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, known as Unamid, could be expelled if the judges indict al-Bashir. A separate UN force policing compliance with a peace deal that ended Sudan’s north-south civil war had hoped they would be spared such retaliation.
But UN Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Edmond Mulet said both Unamid and the other peacekeeping force in semi-autonomous south Sudan, known as Unmis, could become targets of revenge if a warrant is issued for al-Bashir’s arrest.
Mulet told the UN Security Council that the ICC chief prosecutor’s request for al-Bashir’s indictment ”could have serious security and other implications for Unmis and Unamid”.
”[It] could potentially derail the CPA process,” he said, referring to the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended 20 years of civil war that resulted in the deaths of about two million people across Africa’s largest country.
”We are concerned about the suggestions of an uncontrolled reaction to an indictment by the population against Unmis,” Mulet said.
”We are also concerned by statements of government officials of an intention to expel UN staff members … thought to have cooperated with the ICC, even though they are performing their authorised functions as directed by the Security Council,” he said. — Reuters