Although Uganda has officially invited Sudan’s embattled leader, President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, to the 4th International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, its failure to assure his immunity from an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court makes it doubtful he will be attending in person.

No doubt Kampala is for its own part hoping for a no-show.

The summit opens on December 11 and has scheduled a special session of 11 Heads of State of member countries focusing on sexual and gender-based violence on December 15 and 16.

A source privy to the planning meetings for the summit intimated to The EastAfrican that some Sudan officials attending these meetings were interested to know whether the government would act on the arrest warrants the International Criminal Court issued against President Bashir.

According to the source, Ugandan officials in the meeting were visibly uncomfortable at these concerns and set them aside pending further consultation.

The African Union has asked member countries to disregard the arrest warrants because the ICC seems to target only African leaders but also because acting on them would set back the peace process between Sudan and its recent breakaway neighbour South Sudan.

“The standard practice is when we have a conference or meeting of such a nature, we send out invitations to all the leaders,” noted James Mugume, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“[But] our standing understanding [with Sudan] is that when we invite him, he can delegate.”

The ICC has indicted Bashir twice, first in March 2009 for five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts for war crimes, and again in July 2010 for three counts of genocide.

Shortly after the first warrants were issued, Uganda’s Minister of State for International Relations Henry Okello Oryem sparked a diplomatic crisis when he was quoted as saying the government was considering the possibility of executing it were Bashir to come to Uganda. Alongside other African leaders, Bashir had been invited for an AU heads of state summit on refugees and internally displaced persons.

Both President Yoweri Museveni and Oryem’s immediate boss, Minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa, moved quickly to defuse a diplomatic row by distancing the government from the junior minister’s remarks.

Bashir has not set foot in Uganda since the warrants were issued, although Uganda has officially invited him twice — first for President Museveni’s swearing-in ceremony in May and again in July for the African Union Summit.

In both instances, the ICC reminded Uganda of its obligation to arrest and hand him over if he showed up. In fact, for the AU summit, the ICC not only reiterated its position, it also expressed frustration that Uganda was being ambiguous about what it planned to do if Bashir showed up in town.

Sudan is currently embroiled in a diplomatic row with Kenya after the High Court in Nairobi ordered the arrest of Bashir should he set foot on Kenyan soil again. The court was acting on a suit filed by the Kenyan chapter of the International Commission of Jurists seeking a fresh arrest warrant for Bashir.

Last year, the International Criminal Court and a number of foreign governments criticised Kenya for failing to arrest Bashir when he attended a ceremony to enact the country’s new Constitution. In fact, the ICC is said to have reported Kenya to the UN Security Council over the matter.

Uganda, unlike Kenya, is in a less ambiguous position regarding Bashir. For one, having sought the ICC’s help in dealing with its notorious Joseph Kony and his LRA rebels, it cannot dither in handing over Bashir at the earliest opportunity were he to set foot on Ugandan soil.

What is more, there has never been any love lost between the two countries, or more precisely, their leaders. For a long time, each supported a rebel group that was fighting the other — Uganda, the Sudan People Liberation Army/Movement, and Sudan, Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army.

Both rebellions ended at about the same time in 2006, with quite different results. The SPLA secured semi-autonomous control of Southern Sudan pending a referendum on secession and eventual independence if the plebiscite went in its favour, all of which happened.

Kony and his rebels, who were based in Southern Sudan and were known mercenaries of the Khartoum government against the SPLA, scattered to the DR Congo and Central African Republic jungles where they have continued to wreak havoc in the region.

Recently, Museveni accused Sudan of continuing to sustaining the LRA and stoking mayhem in newly independent South Sudan, which Uganda considers, albeit informally, its protege. 

A senior official from the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region Secretariat told The EastAfrican Bashir is highly unlikely to come.

“Ah, do you want them [Uganda] to annoy the Americans?” he remarked rather resignedly.

He added, though, that regional states nonetheless have to find a way of engaging Bashir because it is in their interests to successfully tackle regional problems. Isolating him, he explained, only serves to make him defiant and antagonistic.

“We have learnt from experience that continuous engagement eases tensions among these leaders and helps them to pull in one direction about the pressing issues that affect the region. As Kenya’s efforts in Somalia and its decision to join Amisom [the AU mandated peace keeping force] show, there is growing appreciation for collection action on regional challenges in the region.”