By Colum Lynch
Foreign Policy - Tuesday, November 19, 2013
The African Union came to the U.N. Security Council last week in
search of a showdown. But its representatives left with little to show for
their effort, having failed to persuade the United States and other Western
powers to suspend the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecution of two
African leaders, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto,
who stand accused of orchestrating a frenzy of mass murder during the country's
post-election violence in 2007 and 2008.
Securing a delay in the trial, however, was hardly the point of the
exercise. The African sponsors of the resolution, including Ethiopia, Kenya,
Rwanda, and the five members of the African Union's ICC contact group -- Burundi,
Mauritania, Namibia, Senegal and Uganda -- knew going in that they lacked the
votes to prevail in the Security Council. Opposition from the Britain, France,
and the United States all but ensured that the initiative was doomed from the
start.
The real aim of the AU's offensive was twofold: to register Africa's
dismay over the council's refusal to defer to the region's leaders on a highly
sensitive issue and to reinforce Kenya's bargaining position on the eve of
negotiations at the Hague over possible amendments to the ICC treaty that would
prevent Kenyatta and Ruto from having to
sit in the
Netherlands for a lengthy trial. The Kenyan government
is proposing that its leaders be permitted to sit out their trials entirely,
leaving their lawyers to represent them instead. (Here's a confidential copy of
the main amendments
under consideration.)
To read more...
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