SUMMARY: Sudan's former president is one step closer to prosecution for the egregious war crimes he allegedly committed. During Omar al-Bashir’s 30 years in power, Sudan descended into civil war. Now, as the country’s transitional government conducts peace talks with rebel leaders, it has agreed to send Bashir to [ICC] trial. Amna Nawaz gets analysis from Salih Booker of the Center for International Policy.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to the chaos in Yemen, which seems to be growing with each passing hour, with questions of who’s in control.
The last vestiges of Yemen’s government crumbled as Shiite Houthi rebels advanced on Aden. The pro-American president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, had taken refuge there, but the Houthis offered $100,000 for his capture, and local officials said he fled on a boat.
Hadi’s foreign minister, speaking from Egypt, disputed that report.
RIAD YASSIN, Foreign Minister, Yemen (through interpreter): Until now, Aden is still standing. The president is still in Aden, and he is trying as hard as possible to withstand.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In Washington, the State Department said only that Hadi has left the presidential palace.
JEN PSAKI, State Department Spokeswoman: He is no longer at his residence, which you have seen in reporting, but we can certainly confirm. I’m not in a position to confirm any additional details from here about his location.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Houthi advance was aided by fighters loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted in 2011. The rebels now control the capital, Sanaa, and have spread south and west. Their advance, with Iran’s apparent support, prompted Saudi Arabia to station forces along its border with Yemen.
“Victory to the revolution,” they cried. “Victory to the south.”
As the rebels cheered today, Hadi’s aides formally asked the Sunni Arab states to come to his aid.
SUMMARY: In Yemen, Houthi Shiite rebels now control the capital, have spread south and west, and are making an advance on Aden, driving out President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Who will rise to power and how does the turmoil affect the region? Leslie Campbell of the National Democratic Institute joins Judy Woodruff to offer analysis.
SUMMARY: In Yemen’s capital Sanaa, people awoke overnight to explosions as Saudi jets bombarded military targets. The goal of the operation, which killed at least 18 civilians, was to drive out Shiite Houthi rebels who have taken over much of the country. Iran, key supporter of the Houthis, denounced the strikes. Judy Woodruff reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Now, an update on the continued fighting in the African nation of Sudan and a well-known visitor to that country.
Last summer, people in South Sudan celebrated as they became citizens of the world's newest nation. After decades of internal violence in Sudan, the South won its independence in a 2011 referendum. But the South's hard-won freedom hasn't stopped the fighting for oil-rich territory and over ethnic divisions. Sudan is a major oil supplier to China and other nations.
Shortly before the formal break, the Sudanese government took military action in the border areas of Abyei and South Kordofan. That region had been aligned with the South, but now lies north of the new border. Fighting there has continued, with growing appeals for world action.
Actor George Clooney is a longtime advocate for peace across Sudan. He visited the border region this past week.
With the announcement of final voting results, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan said Monday that his government would accept the choice of the long-embattled region of southern Sudan to separate from the north, setting the stage for the creation of the world’s newest country this summer.
According to the final count, announced in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, 98.83 percent of the more than 3.8 million registered voters in southern Sudan chose to separate from the north. In many parts of the country the vote was over 99 percent.
Sudan has endured two long and brutal civil wars between the Arab north and the mostly animist and Christian south, in a period from the early years of independence from Britain to 2005, when a peace agreement was signed, setting the stage for the referendum.
Both President Bashir and the southern region’s president, Salva Kiir, were in attendance for the announcement as street celebrations spread through the southern capital, Juba.
“Today we received these results and we accept and welcome these results because they represent the will of the southern people,” Mr. Bashir said in a statement on state television, according to Reuters.
It was September 2008 and a band of Somali pirates made a startling discovery.
The Ukrainian freighter they had just commandeered in the Gulf of Aden was packed with weapons, including 32 Soviet-era battle tanks, and the entire arsenal was headed for the regional government in southern Sudan. The Ukrainian and Kenyan governments vigorously denied that, insisting that the tanks were intended for the Kenyan military.
“This is a big loss for us,” said Alfred Mutua, a spokesman for the Kenyan government, at the time.
But it turns out the pirates were telling the truth — and the Kenyans and Ukrainians were not, at least publicly. According to several secret State Department cables made public by WikiLeaks, the tanks not only were headed to southern Sudan, but they were the latest installment of several underground arms shipments. By the time the freighter was seized, 67 T-72 tanks had already been delivered to bolster southern Sudan’s armed forces against the government in Khartoum, an international pariah for its human rights abuses in Darfur.
Bush administration officials knew of the earlier weapons transactions and chose not to shut them down, an official from southern Sudan asserted in an interview, and the cables acknowledge the Kenyan officials’ assertions that they had kept American officials informed about the deal. But once the pirates exposed the arms pipeline through Kenya, the Obama administration protested to the Ukrainian and Kenyan governments, even threatening sanctions, the cables show.
