France might be open to deal on Sudan's Bashir
By Louis Charbonneau
September 17, 2008
Reuters
Original Source: https://mail.hudsonny.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN17271926.html \t _blank http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN17271926.html 
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 17 (Reuters) - France suggested on Wednesday it could support suspending an international indictment of Sudan's president for war crimes if Khartoum met several conditions including ending the killings in Darfur.
In July the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, asked the court's judges to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes in Sudan's conflict-ravaged Darfur region.
Moreno-Ocampo accused the Sudanese leader of launching a campaign of genocide in 2003 that has killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through starvation and disease and forced 2.5 million from their homes.
The African Union, Arab League and other alliances have urged the U.N. Security Council to use its powers under Article 16 of the ICC statute to block any proceedings against Bashir to avoid shattering the fragile peace process in Darfur.
Although the ICC judges are not expected to make a decision before October or November, officials from some Western governments have been saying privately that issuing a warrant for Bashir's arrest might do more harm than good.
France's U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters that Paris might be open to the idea of freezing any ICC action against Bashir provided specific conditions were met.
Ripert made it clear that bomb attacks and killings in Darfur would have to cease. Also, Khartoum would have to open a full inclusive political dialogue with all groups in Darfur, relations with Sudan's neighbor Chad would have to improve, and Khartoum would need to try two indicted war crimes suspects.
If the Sudanese government were to meet those four conditions, Ripert said, Why not?
'DANGEROUS SIGNAL'
Britain also has not ruled out the possibility that it would back an Article 16 suspension. European diplomats have said that London's position was similar to France's.
The human rights organization Amnesty International and the United Nations' former human rights chief Louise Arbour spoke out on Wednesday against blocking ICC moves on Bashir.
To put ICC proceedings on hold in Darfur would send a dangerous signal to would-be war criminals that justice is negotiable and the Security Council can be held hostage to their threats, Arbour wrote in the International Herald Tribune newspaper.
The new U.N. peacekeeping chief, Alain Le Roy of France, told reporters that he was very worried about how Khartoum would retaliate if the ICC decided to indict Bashir.
Diplomats say Khartoum has threatened to expel the U.N./African Union peacekeeping force, known as UNAMID, in Darfur if Bashir is indicted, although some U.N. officials play this down.
There have been contradictory messages, Le Roy said. I'm not sure they have made up their mind how to retaliate.
Le Roy also said he did not expect UNAMID to reach 80 percent of its full deployment by the end of the year, as the United Nations had hoped, due to a delay in the arrival of Thai and Nepalese units in Darfur. (Editing by Xavier Briand)