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UN's Sudan Envoys Question ICC's Timing, Call for
Chad Solution, Don't Know of Lockheed
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS,
June 24 -- There can be no solution
in Darfur without changes in both Chad and Khartoum, negotiators Jan
Eliasson and Salim Ahmed Salim told the Press on Tuesday. But while
pressure is
applied in Sudan, who is pressuring Chad's Idriss Deby government? Eliasson said that every member state with
bilateral
relations should use them. While he avoided that part of the question,
it seems
clear that as to Chad this means France.
On
the Justice and
Equality Movement's assault on Khartoum which was stopped at Omdurman,
Eliasson
said he and Salim Salim met with Khalil Ibrahim two weeks before the
May 10
attack, urging him to desist of military action, which Khartoum had
been
expecting. There was "no receptiveness by Khalil Ibrahim," Eliasson
said. He felt his power has "not reached its peak."
On
the question of
the International Criminal Court, Salim Ahmed Salim said that while
"impunity
must never be allowed to prevail," the "timing of any decision
becomes important." Inner City Press asked if he meant ICC prosecutor
Luiz
Moreno Ocampo's past or future indictments. Future, he answered, why
speak
about the past. Video here,
from Minute 1:05:20. Ocampo has said that the government
apparatus in Sudan, above the level of current indictee Ahmad Harun, is
guilty
of war crimes. He has implied he might also bring indictments of rebel
groups
and even their supporters. We'll see.
Salim Salim and Jan
Eliasson, Ocampo's timing and Lockheed Martin not shown
Eliasson
said that
on the UN's no-bid
contract with U.S.-based military contractor Lockheed Martin
for Darfur peacekeeping camps, "I have no information, we have to come
back on that... no information on that in any detail." Video here,
from Minute 54:37. The head of the hybrid UNAMID force,
Rodolphe Adada, said that the UN and also the U.S. were trying to
convince
Sudan to allow another extension of the contract. The latter would seem
to be
at the level of envoy Richard Williamson, who in his last
appearance at the UN,
alongside Mia Farrow, criticized UN peacekeepers for failure to the
respond
during the attack on Abyei.
Tuesday the Security
Council unanimously voted to
request that Ban Ki-moon "examine the root causes of, and the role
played
by, UNMIS in connection with the violence ... in Abyei in May 2008, and
consider what follow-up steps may be appropriate for UNMIS." Why not a similar inquiry into the JEM attack
on Omdurman? We'll see.
* * *
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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