by Bob Seery

Created on: February 07, 2009

Some have argued that Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court should be forced to halt indictment proceedings against Sudanese President al-Bashir by invoking Article 16 of the Rome Statute on the grounds that the country is at least stable' and that we don't want it to turn into another Somalia'.

Well, I don't think there's anything particularly stable about it and its already proven worse than Somalia. I mean how many independently commissioned reports and fact-finding missions are required to mobilise the international community into action?Yes, intervention is necessary and the threat of a Chinese veto is not an insuperable obstacle; they did after all abstain along with the US on the vital Security Council Resolution 1593 that gave the ICC the original mandate to pursue their investigations. The 2009 downturn will significantly impact Chinese demand for imported crude and we should work to ensure that it is the Sudanese exports that are curtailed. Sudan's allies in the Arab League, OPEC and the Organisation of Islamic's Conference can be brought onside by a reinvigorated commitment to a two-state solution for Palestine - a return to the 1967 borders. There is no point any more in pretending that these two issues aren't inextricably linked.

Now to the supposedly stable situation on the ground. We have a stalled peace process which has managed at least to produce a workable blueprint document - the 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement - but there are at least a dozen rebel groups; mainly splinter factions from the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) who have refused to endorse it. This should not come as a surprise given that Bashir's National Islamic Front have already proven themselves poor parties by backtracking on commitments given in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed with the South in 2005. This treaty, which ended the 21yr civil war with the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) provided for an equitable allocation of oil revenues along with a referendum on secession to be held in 2011. It is in reality a peace even more fragile than the non-existent one with the rebel factions in Darfur. Smugglers in the region openly confess to being in for a quick kill; once the referendum on secession is put to the vote poof', they say, they will go back to war'. It has to be remembered that the North and South have only once stopped fighting since Sudanese Independence in 1956 - a brief

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