The UN Security Council on Thursday renewed the mandate of UN-African Union (AU) troops in Darfur, although the US abstained over a call to defer indictment of Sudan’s president on genocide charges.
Fourteen of the council’s 15 members voted in favor of Resolution 1828 that extends the mandate of the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) for one year from Thursday, when it was set to expire.
Britain’s UN Ambassador John Sawers, whose delegation drafted the text, made it clear that there was “unanimous support” among council members for UNAMID and the extension of its mandate.
Diplomats said the US delegation earlier raised 11th-hour objections to compromise language agreed on Wednesday that finessed sharp differences over a call to delay a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on whether to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on genocide charges.
An amendment sought by South Africa and Libya on behalf of the African Union was not included in the final draft, which instead includes compromise language taking note of a July 21 AU communique that raised concern that any indictment of Beshir might jeopardize the Darfur peace process.
That statement asked the Security Council to defer for a year, renewable, any prosecution of Beshir as requested by ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
“No position has been taken by the Security Council on the question of whether to take any action in the light of the [Moreno-Ocampo] proposal to indict President Beshir,” Sawers said. “That issue is to be addressed on another day.”
“The United States abstained in the vote because language added to the resolution would send the wrong signal to Sudanese President Beshir and undermine efforts to bring him and others to justice,” said Alejandro Wolff, the deputy US ambassador to the UN.
“There is no compromise on the issue of justice,” he added, after dismissing suggestions that the US delegation had given its consent to the compromise language referring to the July 21 AU communique.
Wolff, however, stressed that Washington “strongly supports the extension of UNAMID’s mandate.”
Sudan’s UN Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad expressed gratitude to those who backed the text.
“I want to give high marks to the British delegation,” he told reporters. “They discussed in good faith with everybody. They were very cooperative.”
The Sudanese envoy also warned that Moreno-Ocampo’s call for the arrest of Beshir “would be a recipe for destruction and waste,” but reiterated Khartoum’s pledge “to honor its obligations toward UNAMID.”
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS