{"id":135,"date":"2009-03-26T13:29:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-26T13:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/2009\/03\/26\/the-president-omar-el-bechir-in-egypt-to-meet-with-mubarak\/"},"modified":"2009-03-26T13:29:09","modified_gmt":"2009-03-26T13:29:09","slug":"the-president-omar-el-bechir-in-egypt-to-meet-with-mubarak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/the-president-omar-el-bechir-in-egypt-to-meet-with-mubarak\/","title":{"rendered":"The president Omar el-B\u00e9chir in Egypt to meet with Mubarak"},"content":{"rendered":"


Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the March
4 ICC arrest warrant issued on Bashir for war crimes committed in Sudan with
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. Egypt is not party to the ICC.<\/p>\n


Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir arrived in Egypt on Wednesday, an airport official
said, flaunting his freedom in defiance of an international arrest warrant for
alleged war crimes in Darfur.
\u00a0\u00a0
Beshir was to hold talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on his second visit
abroad since March 4, when the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant
for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
\u00a0\u00a0
But there was little chance of Beshir being arrested in Sudan’s northern neighbour,
with both Egypt and the Arab League rejecting the warrant and saying it threatens
peace talks in Sudan.
\u00a0\u00a0
Egypt — like all Arab states except for Jordan — is not a party to the Rome treaty
that created the ICC, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal.
\u00a0\u00a0
The ICC does not have a police force and calls on signatory states to implement
warrants. However, all United Nations member states are urged to cooperate with The
Hague-based court.
\u00a0\u00a0
Even the United States, where the previous administration described the Darfur
conflict as genocidal, said on Tuesday it was under “no legal obligation” to arrest
Beshir as it was not a signatory to the Rome statute.
\u00a0\u00a0
Beshir’s visit to key US ally Egypt comes just two days after he made a short trip
to diplomatically isolated Eritrea on Monday.
\u00a0\u00a0
Speculation has also risen about whether Beshir will attend a March 29-30 Arab
summit in Doha, with Sudan’s highest religious authority, the Committee of Muslim
Scholars, issuing a fatwa, or edict, urging him not to go.
\u00a0\u00a0
The Egypt visit comes amid a worsening humanitarian situation in Darfur after
Khartoum ordered the expulsion of 13 international aid agencies in the wake of the
arrest warrant.
\u00a0\u00a0
The United Nations warned on Tuesday that it would appeal to international donors
for extra funds following the expulsion of 3,142 aid agency staff.
\u00a0\u00a0
UN humanitarian affairs coordinator Ameerah Haq warned in Khartoum that the
situation in Darfur would deteriorate further over the next weeks.
\u00a0\u00a0
“By the beginning of May, as the hunger gap approaches, and unless the World Food
Programme has found partners able to take on the mammoth distribution task, these
people will not receive their rations,” she said.
\u00a0\u00a0
“Up to 650,000 currently do not have access to full health care,” she added.
\u00a0\u00a0
Aid groups which remain are also increasingly concerned about security in Darfur,
with a Sudanese working for a Canadian group shot dead at his home on Monday.
\u00a0\u00a0
The United Nations says 300,000 people have died — many from disease and hunger —
and 2.7 million been made homeless by the Darfur conflict, which erupted in February
2003.
\u00a0\u00a0
Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
\u00a0\u00a0
Beshir, the first sitting president to be issued with a warrant by the ICC, faces
five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes, accused of
orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape and pillage in Darfur.
\u00a0\u00a0
Many African and Arab states, along with key Khartoum ally China, have condemned the
ICC move and called for the warrant to be suspended.
\u00a0\u00a0
The Arab League and African Union have vowed to lobby the UN Security Council to
suspend the court’s proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir arrived in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the March4 ICC arrest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}