ADDIS ABABA (AFP) – Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir received strong support from Ethiopia Tuesday during his sixth foreign trip since an international arrest warrant for war crimes was issued against him.
Beshir was given full honours in Addis Ababa and received vocal backing from Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who slammed what he described as an “overpoliticised” international justice system.
The Addis visit was Beshir’s sixth foreign trip since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him on March 4 for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
No western representatives were at the airport for Beshir’s arrival.
A diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity said Western ambassadors and envoys would boycott a state dinner in Beshir’s honour after receiving instructions from their capitals not to attend.
But Meles, whose country has often had tense relations with Sudan, stood by his neighbour and said the ICC’s landmark decision was “totally unacceptable”.
“What was done by the ICC to president Omar al-Beshir is an initiative with great implications not only for the people of Sudan, but also for Africans and for Ethiopia,” he said before going into talks with Beshir.
Meles condemned what what he said was the “overpolitisation of the humanitarian issues and the overpolitisation of the international justice.”
Beshir has dismissed the notion that the warrant could restrict his travel.
“We went to this summit to show those who said we could not travel outside Sudan that we can travel outside Sudan,” Beshir told reporters. “Nothing can intimidate us into stopping travelling.”
Beshir also travelled to neighbouring Egypt and Libya over the last month but reserved his first trip after the arrest warrant for Ethiopia’s archfoe Eritrea.
No attempt has been made to arrest him during any of the trips, all to countries — Ethiopia included — that were not signatories to the 2002 international convention that created the ICC.
The ICC accuses Beshir of criminal responsibility for “exterminating, raping and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians” from Darfur, where the United Nations says the conflict has cost 300,000 lives.
Sudan puts the death toll from the six-year war at only 10,000.
Prior to his Ethiopian visit, Beshir on April 1 travelled to the holy Muslim city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, where he performed the umrah, or minor pilgrimage.
On March 30, he attended the Arab League summit in Doha, where other Arab leaders formally pledged their support for the indicted leader and condemned the court’s actions.
“We stress our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the ICC decision against President Omar al-Beshir,” the Arab leaders said in the summit’s final declaration.
Ethiopia had always made it clear it would ignore calls to arrest Beshir and has led a push by the Addis-based Africa Union for the United Nations Security Council to defer the indictments.
The ICC warrant was the Hague-based court’s first-ever arrest warrant against a sitting head of state.
NAIROBI, Kenya – Sudan’s president made his sixth foreign trip since his indictment on charges of war crimes in Darfur, traveling Tuesday to Ethiopia despite the international warrant for his arrest.
An Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman said President Omar al-Bashir would not face arrest.
He will discuss “political, economic and security matters” issues with Ethiopian officials during a daylong visit and will meet with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, spokesman Wahide Belay said.
“He is welcome as a guest to Ethiopia,” he said. “As you know, we have opposed the arrest warrant as a country, as a government, within (regional groups) and within the African Union. There is no reason to take any action on the president.”
Wahide said al-Bashir would leave Ethiopia on Wednesday.
Since the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant on March 4, al-Bashir has visited Eritrea, Egypt and Libya, attended an Arab League summit in Qatar and performed a pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. In March, the Arab League formally rejected the charges against al-Bashir.
Many African countries have said they will not arrest al-Bashir. The African Union, which is based in Ethiopia, has said al-Bashir’s arrest would dangerously imperil the fragile peace process in Sudan and has asked the U.N. to defer the warrant for one year.
While al-Bashir appears to have safe haven in Africa and Arab countries, other nations have supported the arrest warrant.
The United States, Britain and France have strongly opposed any deferral of the warrant for his arrest. President Barack Obama in March denounced the “genocide” in Darfur. But the U.S. has not recognized the ICC’s jurisdiction, citing fears that Americans would be unfairly prosecuted for political reasons.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has said that al-Bashir should be arrested once he leaves Sudanese airspace and that prosecutors are monitoring al-Bashir’s movements. However, the Hague-based court has no police force to execute the warrant.
Al-Bashir’s Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels in the region since 2003, and some 300,000 people have died in fighting and 2.7 million displaced in the conflict, according to U.N. figures. Sudan says the numbers are exaggerated.
Sudan’s government expelled more than a dozen local and international aid agencies after the arrest warrant.
