Thu Mar 12, 2009 (Xinhua) report - excerpt:
KHARTOUM, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's next presidential election, scheduled before the end of this year, was not effected by a decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Sudan, a Sudanese official said on Wednesday.
Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, deputy chairman of the Sudanese Electoral Commission, told reporters that the commission was conducting its preparations for the upcoming election regardless of the ICC arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.
"The Electoral Commission continues to fulfill its mandate in accordance with the law and the constitution for the election being held on scheduled time," the official noted.
"We have not been impacted and continue to perform our duties within the commission," he said.
He added that the Electoral Commission was waiting for a budget to be adopted by the Ministry of Finance, to which a draft was transferred through the Sudanese presidency.
But the work within commission had not stopped, he stressed, adding that the commission was striving for the election being held on time.
The presidential election is to be the first all over Sudan since the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed between the Sudanese government and the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement in 2005 to end a 21-year civil war.
But the March 4 arrest warrant issued by the ICC against the Sudanese president, the first against an incumbent head of state, has increased the variability of the presidential election.
Editor: Yan
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has given an exclusive BBC interview that marks his first international television appearance since the ICC indicted him for war crimes in early March. Al-Bashir, when questioned by the BBC's Zeinab Badawi about what role he has played in either enabling or neglecting Darfur's genocide, spits back angrily, "I challenge anybody to bring me evidence that proves the Sudanese armed forces attacked and killed citizens in Darfur.
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