I interviewed live today with Al Jazeera English on the International Criminal Court's decision to serve an arrest warrant to President Bashir of Sudan.
I made the following points:
The United States has supported the position by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to serve an arrest warrant on President Bashir of Sudan for committing crimes against humanity. At the same time, it puts the United States in a strange position since it never signed the ICC agreement. Serving of the warrant may well worsen the situation in Darfur and even impact adversely implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war between northern and southern Sudan. Interestingly, the coalition of evangelicals, liberals, human rights activists, and others who have supported this action against Bashir recently experienced a dissenting view from one of their own. The Reverend Franklin Graham wrote an oped in the March 3 issue of The New York Times that called on the international community to put peace in Sudan ahead of justice. Graham argued that Bashir's arrest could threaten the south's elections and referendum and hurl the country back into civil war.
Hopefully, Al Jazeera will post the video clip on its YouTube channel. If and when it does so, I will embed the video here.
Image: Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashirat the 20th session of The New Partnership for Africa's Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Jan. 31, 2009. Source: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jesse B. Awalt/Released, via Wikipedia.
