How Not to Wage a PR Offensive

Anyone who still doubts that the ICC’s pursuit of Bashir is unnerving the Sudanese government should take a gander at this article:

An interview with published by Sudan official news agency (SUNA) with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband yesterday is fabricated, according to a statement by the British embassy in Khartoum.

“The statements that SUNA news agency attributed to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband on November 19 are completely inaccurate” the embassy spokesperson said in a statement.

“The Foreign Secretary did not give any interview to SUNA. Nor did he speak about Sudan in the terms described during his recent visit to Damascus” the spokesperson added.

SUNA’s reporter in Damascus quoted Miliband as saying in an interview that London and Paris are working together to introduce a UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution deferring International Criminal Court (ICC) indictment of Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.

“The UK supports the international efforts undertaken in the UNSC aiming to suspend a decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir for another year” Sudan’s state agency quoted Miliband.

“We realize that these international measures will not solve the crisis but will complicate it even further and may be put the future of peace in Sudan on the brink of collapse” he added.

But the British embassy stressed that UK policy regarding on the ICC is “unchanged”.

I’m not sure what’s more pathetic: fabricating a foreign official’s statement or thinking that you’d get away with it.  Either way, it’s clear that Bashir is becoming increasingly desperate to stave off his indictment.  Perhaps he knows something we don’t?