TUESDAY, JULY 13, 2010


KLMNO THE WORLD Sudan’s Bashir charged with genocide


VIOLENCE IN DARFUR


First sitting head of state to face such counts


by Colum Lynch


and Rebecca Hamilton The International Criminal


Court’s judges on Monday charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with or- chestrating a bloody campaign of genocide against Darfur’s three main ethnic groups, the first time the Hague-based court has ac- cused a sitting head of state of committing the most egregious international crime. The three-judge pretrial cham- ber issued a formal arrest war- rant for Bashir — the second time it has done so — on three counts of genocide. They include the crime of targeted mass killing, the causing of serious bodily or mental harm to members of a tar- get group, and deliberately in- flicting conditions of life calculat- ed to bring about the group’s physical destruction. “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr. al-Bashir acted with spe- cific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups,” the judges concluded. The decision provided a degree of vindication to the United States, which has stood largely alone in characterizing the killing in Darfur as genocide. It also gave a boost to the court’s Argentine prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocam- po, whose pursuit of the Suda- nese leader has generated intense opposition from other African and Arab leaders. Moreno-Ocam- po suffered a setback this month when his case against another al- leged war criminal, the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga, was suspended for a second time. Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Ab- dalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mo- hamad, dismissed Monday’s rul- ing as a politically motivated ef- fort to undercut prospects for peace in Sudan and vowed never to surrender Bashir. “We con- demn this in this strongest terms; it will only harden our resolve,” he said in an interview. “This court’s objective is to destroy chances for peace in Sudan; we’re not going to be bothered by it.” Moreno-Ocampo said he wel- comed the decision, which essen- tially reverses a previous ruling by the pretrial chamber to reject the genocide charges. He said the new ruling honors the victims of the mass killing in Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan. It may impose new obligations on states that have signed the Genocide Convention, including the United States, to cooperate with the court in its effort to arrest Bashir, Moreno-Ocampo added. The court issued a previous ar- rest warrant against Bashir in March 2009, on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sudan, which has nev- er ratified the treaty establishing the criminal court, has refused to surrender Bashir, who was re- elected this year in a U.N.-backed election to a five-year term. The violence in Darfur began


Castro’s return to television proves


by William Booth MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH/REUTERS


President Omar Hassan al-Bashir is accused of “specific intent to destroy in part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups” in Darfur. Despite earlier, related charges, Bashir was reelected this year.


mexico city —Fidel Castro re- turned to Cuban television Mon- day night, his first major appear- ance in years, as the aging, ailing revolutionary leader held forth on the dangers of possible nuclear confrontations in Iran and the Korean Peninsula. He looked pretty good. Wearing


a plaid shirt under a blue-gray track suit, the 83-year-old Castro spoke slowly but clearly. Some- times he seemed out of breath, but he kept up a steady pace, jab- bing or waving his hands to em- phasize points. The appearance was neither a real interview nor a speech, but rather a kind of a lecture, with a journalist as his prop. Castro sat behind a desk and occasionally re- lied on notes. He was thinner than before, but not gaunt. His eyes seemed focused. His beard was wispy gray. “Castro may not return to pow- er in Cuba, but he wants the world to know he’s not finished,” said Anya Laundau French, director of the U.S-Cuba Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation. “For U.S. policymakers stubbornly holding out for a ‘biological solu- tion’ to our Cuba policy, Fidel Cas- tro dashed those hopes tonight.” Castro did not address the dec- ades-long chasm between his country and the United States, nor did he discuss the great chal- lenges facing Cuba. Instead he fo- cused on relations between the United States and both Iran and North Korea. “There are 20 million Iranians with military training,” he warned, and he said he imagined that the “Korean Peninsula will be a sea of flames.” As Castro addressed his coun-


trymen, Cuban officials quietly re- leased seven political prisoners and put them and their families aboard a flight to Madrid — part of an agreement last week to free dozens of such prisoners. “He talked about all the prob- lems of the world and not the


to be ‘anticlimactic’ Cuban leader focuses on Iran and N. Korea, not his nation’s woes


problems in Cuba or what has been going on with the political prisoners,” said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Mi- ami. “He wanted to take the atten- tion away from Cuba.” Gomez added that the com- mandante also “sent a message to the Cuban government elite that he is still around and very much involved in the decision-making process.” “It’s a little anticlimactic,”


Laundau French said of the TV appearance, “because Cubans aren’t thinking about Iran or about the United States. They’re thinking about their pocketbooks, and about their country’s difficult economic situation.” The Telesur network, which aired the broadcast, said it was live and not pre-taped. A front-page article Monday in


Cuba’s Communist Party daily, Granma, announced that Castro would participate in a special in- stallment of “Mesa Redonda,” or “Round Table,” the country’s nightly public affairs gabfest, “to evaluate the dangerous events taking place in the Middle East.” The topic is a favorite one for Castro, a prolific essayist whose thoughts appear in state media and blogs under the headline “Re- flections by Comrade Fidel,” most recently on Sunday. The Cuban dictator largely dis- appeared from public view in July 2006 after suffering a serious in- testinal illness. He underwent surgery for what is believed to be diverticulitis. In the years since, the public has caught only a few glimpses of him, such as meeting foreign dig- nitaries, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. He had not been interviewed on televi- sion since June and September 2007, when he appeared weak and distant in videotaped sessions with state media. The most recent and dramatic Castro sighting had come Wednesday, when the elder states- man — wearing his now-trade- mark track suit — was photo- graphed greeting workers at a na- tional science center. Images snapped by a mobile phone were posted on a pro-government blog. boothb@washpost.com


S


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JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST


In 2004, rebels in Darfur passed the remains of civilians they said had been killed by Sudanese military forces. The United Nations says up to 300,000 civilians have died since 2003 as a result of the conflict.


in early 2003 when two rebel groups took up arms against Su- dan’s Islamic government, citing a legacy of bias against Darfur’s ethnic tribes. In response, Khar- toum organized local Arab mili-


tias, the Janjaweed, to help crush the resistance and its followers. The United Nations estimates that as many as 300,000 civilians died as a result of violence or hardships brought on by the


forced displacement of nearly 2million Darfurians.


lynchc@washpost.com


Hamilton, a special correspondent, reported from Khartoum.


CUBAVISION VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS


This television image shows former president Fidel Castro speaking during an interview in Havana on the “Mesa Redonda,” or ”Round Table,” a daily Cuban talk show on current events.


DIGEST NORTH KOREA


Military cancels talks on sinking of warship


North Korea’s military abrupt- ly canceled a rare meeting Tues- day with the U.S.-led United Na- tions Command that had been ar- ranged to discuss the deadly sinking of a South Korean war- ship. The meeting, proposed last week by North Korea, had been scheduled for Panmunjom, a vil- lage in the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea. It would have been the first such military meeting since the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan, which killed 46 South Korean sailors and sharply raised ten- sions on the divided Korean Pen- insula.


But the North requested a de-


lay in the talks for “administra- tive reasons,” the U.N. Command said in a statement. A new meet- ing time was not immediately proposed, it said. North Korea has denied any in- volvement in the sinking of the warship, even though an interna- tional investigation blamed a North Korean torpedo for the ex- plosion.


— Associated Press FRANCE


Amid accusations, Sarkozy seeks reform President Nicolas Sarkozy,


combating allegations of influ- ence-peddling in the French gov- ernment, said Monday he will seek new laws to guarantee against conflict of interest by ministers, members of Parlia- ment and other senior officials. Sarkozy, in a special television


interview, said he also will urge Labor Minister Eric Woerth, who is at the center of the accusations, to abandon his post as chief fund- raiser for Sarkozy’s political party while he serves as a government minister. The concessions came after three weeks of suggestions that Woerth may have acted improp- erly during his previous job as budget minister, in charge of tax collection, while at the same time courting wealthy French busi- nesspeople for donations to Sar- kozy’s Union for a Popular Move- ment. Sarkozy said Woerth was above reproach and depicted the accu- sations as an attempt by the So- cialist Party to prevent Sarkozy from carrying out a widely con- tested budget-bolstering move in which the retirement age is being


pushed back from 60 to 62. Similarly, he said a desire to


frustrate the retirement policy changes underlay accusations that he and other conservative politicians received illegal cash payments from France’s wealthi- est woman, Liliane Bettencourt. A judicial investigation has been launched to see whether the alle- gations are founded. “This is all a waste of time,” he told an interviewer in the garden of his Elysee Palace, suggesting the country should focus instead on its economic problems. — Edward Cody


BRITAIN


Ex-envoy: Iraq threat purposely overstated


The British government inten- tionally exaggerated its assess- ment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a former diplomat told Britain’s inquiry into the Iraq war on Monday. Carne Ross, the first secretary to the British mission at the Unit- ed Nations responsible for Iraq policy from 1997 to 2002, said neither Britain nor the United States believed Iraq’s weapons programs were a “substantial threat” before launching the


ARBEN CELI/REUTERS


ALBANIA A foundry worker tends to a statue of George W. Bush, to be placed in the town of Fushe-Kruje, where the then president visited in 2007.


2003 invasion. There was never any firm evi- dence of significant weapon hold- ings, Ross said, but public docu- ments issued by the British gov- ernment “intentionally and substantially” exaggerated the in- telligence after Sept. 11. In 2002, then-Prime Minister


Tony Blair presented a dossier to Parliament and the public that claimed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein might have nuclear


weapons within a year and pos- sessed a chemical and biological arsenal that could be launched within 45 minutes.


— Associated Press


Iraq delays parliament meeting: Iraq on Monday delayed a parlia- ment session scheduled for this week as the political impasse over who will lead the country drags into its fifth month.


Ancient writing found on frag- ment: Archaeologists say a newly discovered clay fragment from the 14th century B.C. is the oldest example of writing ever found in antiquity-rich Jerusalem. The tiny fragment bears an ancient form of writing known as Akkadi- an wedge script and has a partial text including the words “you,” “them” and “later.”


Russia holds subway bombing suspect: Russia’s security service said it had detained a suspect in suicide bomb attacks that killed at least 40 people on the Moscow subway in March and had arrest- ed six women preparing new at- tacks in central Russia. The coun- try is struggling to contain an up- surge of assaults by rebels in the mainly Muslim provinces on its southern flank, who have assert- ed responsibility for the Moscow subway bombings, which also in- jured at least 100 people.


NATO chief warns against Afghan timetable: Setting timetables to withdraw from the war in Af- ghanistan could encourage the Taliban to step up its attacks on coalition forces, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper on Tuesday. — From news services


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