Arab League chief Amr Moussa held talks with Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir on Sunday, armed with a plan in his pocket tipped to try to stall possible war crimes charges against the head of state. “In so far as work is concerned, we had very, very serious discussions for the duration a little less than two hours,” Moussa told reporters after meeting Bashir in the Sudanese capital. Bashir has appointed a crisis committee, chaired by First Vice President Salva Kiir who heads the southern political party that has shared power with Bashir since a 2005 deal ended 21 years of civil war, to deal with the ICC row. “We agreed that I'm going to meet with the vice president and with some of the ministers and the advisers tomorrow. So in pursuance to what we have discussed, we might come back to him,” he added. The Arab League secretary general said reception to his plan – “right here in my pocket” had been good but refused to divulge its details. “Well, I'm confident we can make progress,” he said when asked if he was confident he could solve the problem, before getting into his car. Moussa flew to Sudan with an agreement from Arab foreign ministers to seek a political solution to the row sparked when the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought an arrest warrant for Bashir. The Arab League on Saturday backed Sudan, slammed ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo as “unbalanced,” but said that Sudanese courts should try those accused of war crimes during Darfur's five-year conflict. On Monday, Moreno-Ocampo asked ICC judges to issue a warrant for Bashir's arrest. Meanwhile, Darfur's new chief mediator Djibril Bassole, the foreign minister of Burkino Faso, made his first visit to Sudan on Sunday to begin the uphill task of reviving a stalled peace process. “This will be a difficult mission but it's not mission impossible,” he told reporters after talks with Sudan's State Minister for Foreign Affairs Ali Karti. “We must strengthen dialogue and ask for a cessation of hostilities to create the conditions to search for a comprehensive political solution,” Bassole said.
