|
Cairo: Sudan's president has said in an interview broadcast that the genocide charges against him are part of a campaign to topple his government and divide the country.
In an interview with the Arabic news channel Al Arabiya, Omar Al Bashir said there are forces behind the case at the International Criminal Court who are seeking to drive him from power before elections planned for next year.
The Sudanese leader did not specify who those powers were, but he focused a lot of his criticism in the interview on the US government's policies in the Middle East, accusing Washington of seeking to weaken Arab nations for the sake of Israel's security.
A prosecutor at the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court filed genocide and war crimes charges against the Sudanese president on July 14, accusing him of orchestrating a campaign of killing and rape in Darfur.
Legitimacy
Al Bashir said Sudan was in talks with the Americans over how to resolve the crisis in Darfur, but he accused them of wanting to divide the country to take control of Sudan's natural resources. "Darfur sits on a lake of oil," Al Bashir said.
"We don't mind if they share it with us, we just don't want them to take it all." Al Bashir said those driving the international tribunal's Darfur case feared the elections he has promised toward the end of 2009, which could be Sudan's freest and fairest in decades, would give his government legitimacy.
"This tribunal aims to topple the current government to make a new Sudan, a Sudan that is free of Arabs and far from Islam," he said in the interview, which was recorded Wednesday in Istanbul, where he was attending a summit of African leaders.
The war in Darfur began in 2003 as a crackdown on anti-government rebels who complained their arid region was neglected by Khartoum. The UN estimates 300,000 people have died, directly from attacks or indirectly through starvation.
The international tribunal's prosecutor accuses Sudan's forces and their militia proxies of deliberately targeting civilians by destroying villages and raping women.
|
