Rwanda, Togo and Morocco circulated among UN Security Council members on Friday a draft resolution to defer the International Criminal Court (ICC) trials of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto for one year.
The African Union asked the council last week to postpone the trials of Kenyatta and Ruto so they can deal with the aftermath of the Nairobi mall attack by extremist group al-Shabaab in September, in which at least 67 people were killed.
Kenyatta and Ruto face charges related to the violence after Kenya’s 2007 elections, in which 1,200 people died. Both deny the charges and have tried to have the cases adjourned or halted. Ruto’s trial started last month, while Kenyatta’s trial is due to start on Feb. 5 after being delayed for a third time.
The council can defer International Criminal Court proceedings for one year under Article 16 of the Rome Statute that established the The Hague-based court a decade ago. The council would need to adopt a resolution to take that step.
“We are mandated by the African Union to ensure the deferral is granted,” Rwandan Ambassador to the UN Eugene Gasana told reporters in a statement on Friday. “We have a draft resolution ... we do hope and wish that it will be supported by all council members.”
However, the 15-member council, which heard an impassioned plea for a deferral from a delegation of African ministers during an informal meeting on Thursday, is split on the issue.
Diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity said the US stated on Thursday that it was opposed to a deferral.
A resolution needs nine votes and no veto by any of the five permanent council members — the US, Russia, Britain, China and France.
Council diplomats said that there was not enough support for a deferral of the Kenyan cases to be approved.
Some UN diplomats have said that the council had already turned down a previous deferral request by Kenya in 2011 and rejected a request in May for the cases to be terminated because the UN body had no such power.
The Kenyan cases have caused a growing backlash against the court from some African governments, which regard it as a tool of Western powers used to unfairly target Africans.
The African Union also plans to raise its issues with the court this month at a meeting of the Assembly of State Parties, which is made up of the 122 members of the court.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion