(CNSNews.com) – African nations have elected Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as head of the African Union, a move likely to further bolster the 53-nation bloc’s opposition to a war crimes trial for Sudan’s president.
The Libyan, a former international pariah whose leadership aspirations include founding a “United States of Africa,” has strongly opposed attempts by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges relating to the conflict in western Sudan’s Darfur region.
Shortly after prosecutors in The Hague last July accused Bashir of involvement in genocide, crimes against humanity and murder and asked judges to issue an arrest warrant, Gaddafi discussed with Sudanese leaders ways to block what he described as the “false” charges.
Apart from their A.U. connection, Libya and Sudan are both members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which has closed ranks around Bashir while accusing the ICC of “double standards” for focusing on Sudan rather than other countries, notably Israel.
At an A.U. summit in Addis Ababa on Monday, Gaddafi was elected as chairman for the next year. A group of traditional leaders accompanying his delegation hailed him as the “king of kings.”
In an inaugural speech, he said that during his term, he would “continue to insist that our sovereign countries work to achieve the United States of Africa.”
Gaddafi has been pushing the concept for many years, and he was a key mover behind the creation of the A.U. to replace the looser Organization for African Unity in 2001.
Over the past four years his campaign for full political and economic integration has picked up steam, with 2015 identified as a target date for a United States of Africa with a single union government.
In late 2006, an A.U. executive body declared that all member states viewed the goal as a “desirable” one, but added that “differences exist over the modalities and time frame for achieving this goal and the appropriate pace of integration.”
In reality, few expect movement in the foreseeable future, and Gaddafi in his speech acknowledged that differences persisted among leaders.
Conflicts continue to dog Africa, and leaders ranging from liberal democrats to repressive autocrats are reluctant to give up power or national sovereignty in a process whose end product remains unclear.
Still, Gaddafi hopes to advance the plan at an A.U. summit planned for July. He told the Addis Ababa gathering that unless a majority rejected the project, it would be considered approved.
However successful or otherwise he will be, Gaddafi’s election as A.U. chairman is another victory for the unconventional leader who seized power in a 1969 coup, oversees a regime widely criticized for human rights abuses, and until 1999 was targeted for United Nations sanctions for sponsoring terrorism.
In 2003, Gaddafi said he was renouncing terrorism and abandoning non-conventional weapons programs, paving the way to Libya’s removal from the U.S. list of terror-sponsoring nations three years later. Restoration of diplomatic ties with Washington followed.
Last January, Libya began a two-year stint on the U.N. Security Council, where it has lobbied, along with key Khartoum ally China and several others, to protect Bashir from the ICC.
At the A.U. summit, the president of the body’s administrative Commission, Jean Ping, told the leaders that the bloc was seeking international support for a 12-month postponement in ICC judges’ consideration of the Bashir indictment request, so as “to give a greater chance to the peace process.”
Ping also raised concern about the ICC’s focus on Africa, telling reporters, “The law should apply to everyone and not only the weak.”
The court’s prosecutors have opened investigations into just four situations, all in Africa. They relate to Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Uganda. In the latter three cases, the situations were referred to the court by the governments themselves.
Bashir is the first sitting head of state named as a war crimes suspect by the court’s prosecutors. Sudan has denied the charges and refuses to cooperate with the ICC.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking on the summit sidelines, urged Bashir to “fully cooperate with the decision of the ICC.”
Five years of conflict in Darfur have cost more than 300,000 lives, according to the U.N.
An envoy appointed by the U.N. last June has been trying, with little progress, to mediate an end to the conflict between Khartoum, its allied militia, and rebel groups. Renewed fighting broke out in mid-January in Darfur’s southern Muhajaria district.
State Department spokesman Robert Wood on Monday called the A.U. a “critical institution in terms of our dealing with the continent” but declined to comment further on Gaddafi’s election.