...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful...
to move its July summit from Malawi to its Addis Ababa headquarters after the host nation's refusal to welcome President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
, the foreign ministry said Thursday.
Sudan informed the pan-African bloc of its request on Wednesday after Malawi announced that Bashir "would not be welcome at this summit, upon a claimed adherence of Malawi to its obligations to the so-called '
International Criminal Court',"... where Milosevich died of old age before being convicted ...
the ministry said in a statement.
Sudan's president is wanted by The Hague-based ICC on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the country's troubled Darfur region.
Malawi's new president, Joyce Banda, said in May that she wanted Bashir to stay away from the summit in Lilongwe on July 9-16, to avoid straining ties with key donors for her impoverished country.
Sudan's foreign ministry said Khartoum accorded "the upmost importance" to the July summit, which required the participation of the country's leadership, given that the strained relations between Sudan and the South were on the agenda.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has sought to increase pressure on the international community to arrest Bashir, telling the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the failure to detain him and other Sudanese officials accused of war crimes and genocide was "a direct challenge to the council's authority."
He said the council should consider calling on all 193 UN member states and regional organizations to carry out the arrest warrants.
Under current rules only ICC members, of which Malawi is one, have a duty to arrest Bashir, who has visited several countries, including some court signatories, without any action being taken.