Kenyan
President Uhuru Kenyatta bids farewell to his deputy William Ruto
before departing for the AU summit in Addis Ababa. PHOTO/Reuters
ADDIS ABABA - African heads of state on Saturday opened a special summit on relations with the International Criminal Court.
The African Union meeting is being held to urge the ICC not to prosecute
sitting heads of state and defer the trials of Kenya's leadership and
Sudan's president.
The meeting at the AU headquarters comes amid mounting tensions with the
ICC, which has been accused of acting like a neo-colonialist
institution that has singled out Africans since being set up as the
world's first permanent court to try genocide and war crimes.
"The UN security council and the ICC should work with us to enable the
elected leadership of Kenya to fulfil their constitutional obligations
by urgently considering deferment of the ICC proceedings against the
president and Vice president of Kenya," AU executive council head
Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma said.
In opening remarks to the summit, Zuma nevertheless said African nations
should "do more to strengthen the capacity of our national and
continental judicial systems... so that the ICC indeed becomes the court
of last instance."
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