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Sudan's Bashir in Open Meeting Calls for Local Procurement, Derides "Vicious Campaign"

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in Africa: News Analysis

KHARTOUM, June 5 -- Mere hours after International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo called his government's hindrance of deployment of the UN Mission in Darfur a crime, Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir spoke before the 15 members of the UN Security Council, denouncing a "vicious campaign" that "tarnishes the image, heritage and values" of his country. While not directly mentioning the ICC, he blamed the continuing "crisis in Darfur" on the groups which did not sign the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement, principally the Justice and Equality Movement, whose march on Khartoum was stopped just across the Nile in Omdurman on May 10. This he blamed on Chad's government.

   He took several swipes at the UN, most notably reminding the Security Council members of the admonition by the wider General Assembly in December 2006 in connection with UNAMID's budget to in the future give priority to regional and African contractors. This was done in a series of paragraphs which called for an investigations of the UN's $250 million no-bid contract with Lockheed Martin, for camps in Darfur.  In his speech, President Bashir said that "as decided by the UN General Assembly resolution on the financing of UNAMID, we urge that similar attention be given to local procurement and contractors. Sudan's Ambassador to the UN greeted Inner City Press in the ill-lit green corridor of Khartoum's Friendship Hall, deriving Lockheed Martin's contract and PAE subsidiary, for which he's said visas will be pulled in July 2008.

 
Ban and  Bashir, no-bid PAE - Lockheed contract not shown

   U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff told the press, on the UN's special plane flying back from Darfur to the meeting, that he intended to raise to President Al Bashir his government's failure to execute the ICC's warrants on Ali Kushayb and Ahmad Harun, who is Sudan's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs. There was a name plate for this position on the meeting table Thursday night, but Harun did not attend. The UN's Ashraf Qazi and Rodolphe Adada sat on the Sudanese side of the table, across from the 15 Council members. Wolff was next to last. A reporter joked that he'd been put at the end of the table on purpose. After I speak, he said, they may put me in the [translation] booth [at the end of the room.

   Before each place at the table was a set of water and orange soda and a bowl with a few hard candies and nuts. There were displays of dead floors set on tripods. When Al Bashir had finished, the press was told to leave. "There's no news," some reporters said. Another pointed out Bashir's prediction, echoing one earlier by his UN Ambassador, that the problem of Abyea will be addressed very soon between him and South Sudanese president Salva Kiir.  What about procurement, the swipe at the non-bid Lockheed contract? It made the wires today, it was pointed out, after being virtually ignored since October, even after the General Assembly, which has cited Inner City Press on the topic, specifically criticized and asked for an investigation of the Lockheed contract, and that preference be given in the future for local and African companies. In the half-light outside the closed door Bashir meeting, it felt like the Lockheed issue had ripened.  And in fact it was raised again in the closed-door session, where the contract was called "bizarre" by President Bashir, according to sources at the meeting. Additional story to follow.

  On the humanitarian front, the World Food Program has had 76 trucks of food hijacked on the roads between El Obeid and Darfur. Fifty trucks and 36 drivers are still missing. Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador John Sawers why the UN can't provide some protection to the WFP trucks, perhaps similar to the large UN helicopter which hovered protectively over the Security Council's bus Thursday on the road from El Fasher to the Zamzam internally displaced persons camp. Ambassador Sawers said that the UN Mission in Darfur cannot operate all the way to El Obeid, and the UN Mission in Sudan does not have a presence there either.  To some, the UN's acceptance of the waste implicit in having two entirely separate missions in the same country now takes on a more ominous hue.  We will continue to follow these issues.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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