African Leaders Trying to Save El-Bashir

When they closed the 14^th session of the Summit heads of state and government in Addis Ababa on Tuesday February 2^nd African leaders declared they were to seek for amendment of the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court based in The Hague , Holland . According to officials of the African Union Authority, the leaders want "an amendment to Article 16 of the Rome statute in order to allow the UN General Assembly to defer cases for one year in the case where the UN Security Council would have failed to take a decision within a specified timeframe." The initiative was said to have ironically come from South Africa , whose long suffering under the racist apartheid government made many thought it would be more considerate towards the Black African victims of Arab racism in Southern Sudan . Following the ICC's March 2009 arrest warrant issued against Sudanese President Omar el-Beshir for war crimes, the 53-member bloc called on the UN Security Council to defer the case, but it is yet to do so. The bloc "deeply regrets" that its request to the Security Council to defer proceedings against el-Beshir "has not been acted upon and in this regard reiterates its request to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC)."

The ICC issued the arrest warrant for President el-Beshir of Sudan on five counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes committed in Sudan's war-torn western Darfur region -- its first-ever warrant for a sitting head of state. The AU has argued that the execution of the warrant risks upsetting peace efforts in Darfur and south Sudan .