Who knew? Qaddafi once supported the ICC’s investigation into Sudanese crimes

Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi was a foe of the International Criminal Court long before its prosecutor opened an investigation last month into possible crimes against humanity by the Libyan strongman and members of his inner circle.

For years, Col. Qaddafi has championed efforts within the African Union to undermine the Hague-based court, arguing that the tribunal unfairly targets only African countries for prosecution. During Libya’s Security Council stint in 2008-2009, Qaddafi’s U.N. envoy’s struggled to block initiatives backing the court.

All that changed when the small Central American country, Costa Rica, led a quixotic diplomatic effort in 2008 to convince the Security Council opponents of the ICC – China, Russia and Libya – to pressure Sudan to cooperate with the tribunal, which has charged three Sudanese nationals, including Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, with war crimes and genocide.

Rebecca Hamilton, recounts the Costa Rican effort in her new book Fighting For Darfur.  According to Hamilton, Costa Rica mounted a campaign to press for the passage of a non-binding U.N. Security Council presidential statement endorsing the ICC’s investigation into Sudan’s ruthless counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur, which led to the deaths of more than 300,000 Darfuris, and drove more than 2 million people from their homes.

Costa Rica’s U.N. mission reasoned that the Security Council had distanced itself from the court in the years following the passage in 2005 of Resolution 1593, which authorized an ICC investigation into crimes in alleged crimes Darfur. In a June, 2008, address to the council, Costa Rica’s foreign minister Bruno Ugarte scolded the council for failing to support "what, as time passes, seems to be a policy of appeasement of Khartoum and of indifference to the atrocities that are occurring in Darfur." He lined up support for the statement from 9 of the councils 15 members, enough to secure passage if none of the council’s 5 permanent members cast a veto.

But Costa Rica encountered particularly stiff resistance from China, which was preparing for the upcoming Olympic Games, and Libya. Security Council statements are only adopted if each of the council’s 15 members support it.

Faced with a stalemate, Costa Rica upped the ante, announcing plans to put a similarly worded, but legally-binding Security Council resolution on the matter to a vote, a maneuver that would have required China to exercise its veto to block. The United States, which had been prepared to support a presidential statement, was reluctant to support a binding resolution supporting a court it has long opposed.

"However, it was the Chinese mission that really panicked," Hamilton wrote.  "They begged Costa Rica not to present the resolution, promising to sign a president statement supporting the ICC if Costa Rica agreed not to move forward with the resolution. But, as the Costa Ricans told China, the biggest impediment to a presidential statement going through at this point was Libya. Jorge Ballestero, a diplomat at the Costa Rican mission to the United Nations, told Hamilton that China assured them: We can talk to our friends."

Shortly after, China and Libya dropped their opposition to the presidential statement which urged Sudan  "to cooperate fully with the court…in order to put an end to impunity fro the crimes committed in Darfur." Ballestero said that Costa Rica had calculated, correctly, that China could not afford to cast a veto over Darfur at a time when it was seeking to burnish its international reputation in the lead up to the Olympics.

Ironically, a top Libyan official at the time, Ibrahim Dabbashi, last month led a diplomatic revolt against Qaddafi’s government, and backed efforts by the U.N. Security Council to approve an ICC investigation against Qaddafi’s government.

(Disclosure: Hamilton interviewed me in connection with her book, and we once shared a byline on a story in the Washington Post  on the ICC investigation into alleged genocide in Sudan) 

Follow me on Twitter @columlynch