Kenya’s PEV Deferral Case to be Heard at the UN

NAIROBI--Kenya’s 2007 post election violence cases are drawing debates each passing day as the ICC summons are getting much closer. President Kibaki and his Party of National Unity want the cases against the 6 suspects delayed for a year, arguing that Kenya needed the time to put in place the judicial mechanisms to try the cases.

This led to their effort to schedule a meeting today with the UN Security Council with aims to have their plea heard by the members of the Security Council.

The Security Council president for the month of March - China’s UN Ambassador Li Baodong - agreed to convene the session on the basis of a consensus among council members that Kenya's plea deserved at least to be heard, spokeswoman Anne Siddall explained.

“The scheduled session for today at UN headquarters in New York does not qualify as an official Security Council meeting”, Ms Siddall said.

She added that the gathering will take the form of an “interactive dialogue” involving the Council’s 15 member states and representatives of Kenya and the African Union.

The Council has since requested Kenya and the African Union(AU), whose summit supports Kenya’s case, for an informal discussion on the basis of which it will decide whether to formally discuss the request.

The meeting is intended to determine whether Kenya's request for a 12-month deferral should be formally taken up by the Council.

AU is represented by its permanent mission to the UN, together with a Peace and Security Commissioner Ambassador Rantane Lamamra and Ms Bience Philomina Gawanas, its Social Affairs commissioner to beef up the team.

Talking about the Kenya’s deferral request, it has deeply exposed the divisions in the coalition government and there would be more embarrassing wrangling on the international stage if the Council decides to formally hear Kenya.

Coalition partners Orange Democratic Party (ODM), sent its secretary-general Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o to Addis Ababa, where the AU is headquartered, to present his party’s petition.  The party in a letter to the UN Security Council strongly opposed the move for deferral and would like the cases to proceed at The Hague, accusing Mr Kibaki of seeking to extend impunity.

The Security Council has already received a letter from ODM to that effect.

On the other hand, the Party of National Unity wrote back a petition to the Council accusing ODM of embarrassing the country and its leaders of being the “true masterminds” of the violence that followed the election in 2007.

Kenya’s Attorney General Amos Wako confirmed receiving summonses for Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, Mr William Ruto, Gen. Hussein Ali, ODM chairman Henry Kosgey, Mr Francis Muthaura and Mr Joshua Sang on Tuesday 15 March and forwarded them to Kenya Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere for service.

The summonses had been handed over to the Kenyan embassy in The Netherlands by ICC Registrar Silvana Arbia on Friday 11 March.

Western diplomats  in Nairobi largely oppose the quest for deferral, seeing it as pointless and a delay of justice. They have argued that if the suspected masterminds of previous violence are not punished, the likelihood exists that there could be further violence in future elections.