peace vs. justice

In the NY Times today there's a good piece defending Ocampo's indictment of President Bashir for war crimes. It's worth reading. We'll have to see what happens, but I think the article makes the point that, indictment or no indictment, the promise of a quiet retirement in a neutral country for Bashir has to be a card on the table in negotiations. The peace process is too important for that.

We'll see. I still think that at best, this will be a wash, and at worst it will have adverse effects on the Sudanese political situation. But we'll have to see. There's very limited precedent for this sort of thing, although you could argue that Bashir's position is somewhat similar to Milosevic's in 1999, minus the NATO intervention in Kosovo.