{{The Republic of Malawi has cancelled hosting of the African Union Summit Next Month arguing that they would not accept Sudan\u2019s President Omar al-Bashir to step on their soil because of his indictment on international war Crimes charges.}}<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter considering the interests of Malawians, I want to inform Malawians that the Cabinet met today (Friday) and decided it was not interested to accept the conditions by the African Union, therefore Malawi is not hosting the summit,\u201d Vice President Khumbo Kachali said on state radio.<\/p>\n
Kachali said the country had received a communication from the AU commission that as a host country Malawi was required to invite all presidents including Bashir.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commission said if Malawi was not willing to host al-Bashir, the venue should be shifted to another country,\u201d he said, adding that the summit would be hosted by Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
Sudan on Thursday said it had urged the pan-African bloc to shift the summit to its Addis Ababa headquarters after the host nation\u2019s refusal to welcome Bashir.<\/p>\n
In response, the commission had written Malawi commanding it to either accept al-Bashir or forget hosting the summit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile we have obligations to abide by the decisions of the African Union we are also under an obligation to abide by international laws including the Roman Statute,\u201d said Kachali.<\/p>\n
Sudan\u2019s president is wanted by The International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the country\u2019s troubled Darfur region.<\/p>\n
Malawi\u2019s new president, Joyce Banda, said in May that she wanted Bashir to stay away from the summit scheduled in Lilongwe on July 9-16, to avoid straining ties with key donors for her impoverished country.<\/p>\n
Under current ICC rules, its members including Malawi have a duty to arrest Bashir, who has visited several countries, including some court signatories, without any action being taken.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the UN Security Council that failure to detain him and other Sudanese officials accused of war crimes and genocide was \u201ca direct challenge to the council\u2019s authority.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The Republic of Malawi has cancelled hosting of the African Union Summit Next Month arguing that they would not accept Sudan\u2019s President Omar al-Bashir to step on their soil because of his indictment on international war Crimes charges.}} \u201cAfter considering the interests of Malawians, I want to inform Malawians that the Cabinet met today (Friday) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[75],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-homenews","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2492"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}