AU, ICC 'working together on Darfur crisis'

Prosecutor insist Sudanese President will face charges of crimes against civilians in Darfur.
ADDIS ABABA – The African Union and the International Criminal Court “are working together” to resolve the crisis in Sudan’s Darfur region, court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo insisted Tuesday.
“Now it is time to stop the crimes. The AU is working (to stop the suffering of people in Darfur), the court is working, and we are working together,” Ocampo said.
“Peace and justice are working together in Darfur,” insisted the prosecutor, who was behind the ICC arrest warrant against Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir for crimes against civilians in the war-torn, western Darfur region.
His comments came after the AU on Friday said it would not cooperate with the warrant and again appealed to the United Nations to delay the case.
But Ocampo insisted Tuesday: “Mr Beshir will face the charges. It will take time, it is a process.
“Arresting a head of state is a process, it is not a police operation.”
Ocampo was speaking on a visit to Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to meet an AU panel which focuses on the crisis in Darfur.
The prosecutor added he was in Ethiopa at the invitation of the AU panel.
The arrest warrant was issued for Beshir in March, making him the first-ever sitting head of state to face charges before the ICC.
The president has defied the warrant by travelling to nations that are not signatories to the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, before attending last week’s AU summit in Libya.
The AU backed Libyan leader and current AU chief Moamer Gathafi, who said the ICC represented a “new world terrorism”.
He was supported by many countries who felt the court was unfairly targeting Africans.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum in February 2003.
Sudan’s government says 10,000 have been killed.
The AU has called for the UN Security Council to implement a one-year delay to the indictment. It has argued that a warrant against Beshir would disrupt international efforts to bring peace to Darfur.
The UN Security Council can ask the court, via a resolution, to suspend investigations or prosecutions for 12 months.
Earlier Tuesday, Ocampo argued he had enough evidence for a further arrest warrant against Beshir for genocide.
In a document submitted to the ICC appeals chamber, he urged the court to “determine that there are reasonable grounds to believe that President Al-Beshir is criminally responsible for the three counts of genocide”.