EU urges Kenya to arrest Bashir, hand him to court

(BRUSSELS) - European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Kenya on Friday to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and hand him over to an international court to face genocide charges.

"The high representative is concerned by the visit of President Omar Al-Bashir to Kenya, a State party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC)," Ashton's office said in a statement.

"She urges Kenya to respect its obligations under international law to arrest and surrender those indicted by the ICC," it said.

Bashir was among several African leaders who attended a ceremony in Nairobi in which Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki signed a new constitution into law.

The Sudanese president is subject to two arrest warrants issued by the ICC for atrocities committed by his forces in Sudan's western province of Darfur.

Kenya, as a signatory to the treaty which set up the ICC, is obliged to cooperate with the court and arrest Bashir.

It was Bashir's second visit to a signatory of the Rome Statute following a trip to Chad last month. At the time, Ashton had also urged Chad to arrest Bashir, but Chad ignored her plea.

The chief EU diplomat said the ICC was a "valuable instrument of the international community to combat impunity for the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole."

She added that "genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes must not go unpunished and their prosecution must be ensured by measures at both domestic and international level."

In her statement, Ashton also urged Nairobi "to continue to cooperate with the ICC in its investigation into the 2007-2008 post-election violence" in Kenya.