Sudan leader's travel hampered by ICC warrant

KHARTOUM (AFP) – Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir has made a big show of defying a global arrest warrant against him, but in fact it has greatly curtailed his travel, as shown by his scrapping of trip to Istanbul.
Beshir has derived pleasure from cocking a snook at the West since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the warrant in March for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
He appears to be everywhere: delivering fiery speeches to thousands in Darfur, hopping over to Eritrea, visiting Arab capitals like Cairo and Tripoli on the way to Doha, or going on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
The president’s travels are a way to show his strength to the West, which backs the ICC’s bid to try him on charges linked to the six-year Darfur civil war, in which 300,000 people died and 2.7 million were displaced, according to UN figures. Khartoum says 10,000 died.
Most Arab countries and Beijing have supported Beshir in his defiance of the ICC, an international court whose founding treaty was signed by 110 countries, but excluding giants like China, Russia, the United States and India.
Visits to neighbouring countries hold little risk for the Sudanese president because none of them have ratified the statute and the flights don’t enter international air space, except for a brief time over the Red Sea en route to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Beshir “can travel to immediate neighbouring airspace but he won’t adventure into no man’s land airspace,” Fouad Hikmat, a political analyst with the International Crisis Group, told AFP.
Sudanese officials do not want to run the risk of having the president’s plane intercepted in mid air, Hikmat said.
Beshir was in Zimbabwe in June, but declined an invitation by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to attend the South America-Africa summit in Caracas in September, a trip that would have involved a long time in international airspace.
As a state that belongs to the ICC, Venezuela would have had to respect the warrant against Beshir, though that situation remains theoretical as Khartoum and Caracas enjoy warm relations.
The Sudanese leader has also declined an invitation to an African Union meeting in Nigeria in mid-October.
On Monday he opted against attending the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Istanbul.
Sources in Khartoum had said that Beshir had intended to visit the city though they never confirmed his participation in the conference.
The European Union had called on Turkey to “reconsider” its position on hosting Beshir, who decided to “postpone” his visit to Turkey in order to attend to political meetings at home, according to SUNA state news agency.
Beshir was on Sunday in ally Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh where he attended a China-Africa cooperation forum. Cairo is also planning to host a France-Africa summit in February.
The president can visit Egypt without fear of arrest, but his presence at the February summit could seriously embarrass France, a fervent supporter of the ICC, diplomatic sources say.