During a speech in Zalengi in western Darfur, Sudan President and ICC-indicted Omar al-Bashir said that he welcomes the support of the Arab League and African Union. “We found a very strong position in regional organizations such as the Arab League and the AU,” he said, referring to the rejection of these organizations of his arrest warrant for crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the war in Darfur.

He boasts further that the arrest warrant issued against him in March by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has had a ‘positive’ effect in his country and throughout the continent. “It has been good for us,” al-Bashir said after arriving in Addis Ababa to participate in the bilateral talks of the Sudanese-Ethiopian joint commission. For his part, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi reechoed the sentiments and announced that he does not accept the judicial measure against al-Bashir.

The visit to Ethiopia is the sixth for al-Bashir to travel abroad since he was issued the international arrest warrant that prohibits for him to travel. Since the warrant came out, he has previously traveled to Eritrea, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and participated in the Arab League summit in Qatar. None of these countries has detained him to enforce the warrant.

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Via Daily Nation