March 28, 2024

Careful what you start . . .

Yesterday I told you that while churning through documents declassified through FOIA can be frustrating, you do occasionally come across a few gems. An example:

In a demarche sent by the State Department to the US embassy in Senegal on February 11, 2005, the talking points to be used in trying to convince the Senegalese that they should support the US proposal for a new hybrid “Sudan tribunal” rather than refer the Darfur case to the ICC conclude with one additional point of persuasion to be used “at Post’s discretion.”

It states,

“So far the only referrals to the ICC have related to activities in Africa”

The U.S. Government’s current position on the ICC and Darfur, articulated as recently as last month, is that “we’re not going to support what’s called an Article 16 deferral under . . . the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court.”(James B. Warlick Acting Assistant Secretary for International Organizations). As most of you reading this will know, this statement comes in the context of arguments by the African Union and Arab League that the ICC prosecution of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir should be suspended. One of the arguments that Sudan has been promulgating in its attempt to get its allies to suspend the case is that the ICC is a “white man’s court” that targets African countries (Ministry of Information, Khartoum).

Wonder where that idea came from??

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