& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

AU accuses ICC of bias, opens summit

Terms the court as 'political' and 'unfair'

AFP, Addis Ababa
The International Criminal Court was under fire yesterday over its "unfair" and "totally unacceptable" treatment of Africa, as Ethiopia opened a special African Union summit with a scathing attack on the tribunal.
The meeting comes amid mounting tensions between The Hague-based ICC and Kenya, whose president and vice-president have been charged with crimes against humanity for allegedly masterminding a vicious campaign of ethnic violence after disputed 2007 elections.
Several nations in the 54-member AU, whose rotating presidency is currently held by Ethiopia, have accused the ICC of singling out Africans for prosecution, and have demanded that the court drop the proceedings against Kenya's leadership.
"The manner in which the Court has been operating, particularly its unfair treatment of Africa and Africans, leaves much to be desired," Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told ministers and delegates at the opening of the two-day meeting.
"The court has transformed itself into a political instrument. This unfair and unjust treatment is totally unacceptable," he said of the ICC, the world's first permanent court to try genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A Zimbabwean government official yesterday said his country which never signed the Rome Statute supports calls for African states to cut ties with the ICC.
African countries account for 34 of the 122 parties to have ratified the Rome
Statute, the ICC's founding treaty, which took effect on July 1, 2002. A mass pullout from the court - as some countries have demanded -could seriously damage the institution.
Sudan's Foreign Minister Ali Karti told AFP that "African countries have their own mechanisms of justice and they prove to be good, better than the European ones".
The bloc, however, appears divided on the issue - with countries like Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia and Rwanda taking a tough line, but other nations seemingly more reluctant to get embroiled in a diplomatic confrontation and some prominent African figures lobbying hard against a pull-out.
South African antiapartheid icon and Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu fired off a sharply-worded attack that compared ICC opponents to Nazis seeking to evade justice, and argued the number of African cases was merely a reflection on the dismal human rights record of many of the continent's governments.
"Those leaders seeking to skirt the court are effectively looking for a licence to kill, maim and oppress their own people without consequence," he wrote in an oped carried by several newspapers.
"They simply vilify the institution... as Hermann Goering and his fellow Nazi defendants vilified the Nuremberg tribunals following World War II," he wrote.
Former UN secretarygeneral Kofi Annan has also said a pull-out would leave Africa wearing a "badge of shame".
Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed meanwhile sought to distance herself from the perception that her government was lobbying for a mass withdrawal.
"That is not our intention," she told reporters. "Are we concerned about some of the things that are happening in the court? Yes we are, but we never said we would move out."
The special summit started with a ministerial-level meeting yesterday. Heads of state are due to join the debate at the All's Addis Ababa headquarters today.
Algeria's Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said African leaders were likely to send a warning message, telling the ICC to listen to their "legitimate grievances".
All of the ICC's current eight cases are against Africans, giving rise to a sentiment that the court is "hunting" Africans - even if four of those cases, including those involving Kenya, were referred to the court by the countries themselves.
According to one diplomat, there was a sentiment the ICC - which is an independent international organisation, and is not part of the United Nations system - was turning a blind eye to other parts of the world where "massive crimes against humanity had been committed".
The ICC has charged Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Vice-President William Ruto, as well as former radio boss Joshua Arap Sang, with crimes against humanity linked to post-election violence in 2007-2008 that left at least 1,100 dead and more than 600,000 homeless.