The African Union (AU) remains reluctant to support the establisment of an International Criminal Court (ICC) liaison office in Addis Ababa. During a weekend summit in the Ethiopian capital, the AU chairperson also accused the court’s prosecutor of bias.

Fadi El Abdallah from the ICC Public Information section said on Friday there was “no official statement” from the AU concerning the Ethiopian office, but that its stance has probably not changed since July last year, when it refused to support the set up of the ICC office.

Noureddine Mezni, the spokesman of AU Chairman Jean Ping, said it was still “premature to talk about the issue” and did not want to give additional comments.

For the last two years, the ICC has tried to establish an office in Addis Ababa. The ICC Assembly of State Parties has proposed a budget of 420,900 Euros to open the new office in 2011, but the project is still on hold.

“Building sustainable strategic partnerships with all of these actors in Addis Ababa would clearly strengthen the relationship between the Court and the AU,” said a brief from the ICC Registry.

Sunil Pal, head of the legal section of the Coalition for the ICC (CICC) – a group of NGOs which supports the court – said that the opening of Addis Ababa liaison office is crucial.

“It would enable the Court to continue its visibility and engagement in Addis Ababa by providing objective information about the Court’s activities, challenging misconceptions and misunderstandings directly, and fostering relationships with the AU and African States Parties to the Rome Statute,” he said.

During the weekend summit, AU’s Ping accused ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of double standards in prosecuting.

"We Africans and the African Union are not against the ICC. That should be clear," Ping told a news conference at an African Union summit in Ethiopia. But, he added, "we are against Ocampo who is rendering justice with double standards."

The five investigations launched by the ICC prosecution since it started operations in 2002 are about alleged crimes in African countries: Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sudan, Central African Republic and Kenya.

"Why not Argentina, why not Myanmar [...] why not Iraq?" said Ping.

Ocampo has rejected criticism from African states, saying the ICC is only a court of last resort for countries that are either unable or unwilling to try suspects themselves.

The ICC is also conducting preliminary examinations to determine whether it has the jurisdiction to open formal investigations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and the Palestinian territories.

Relations between the Court and the AU soured when Ocampo issued a second arrest warrant in July 2010 against Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir, accusing him of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Darfur.

AU then declared that its members would not collaborate with the ICC to arrest and hand over Bashir.

During the weekend summit, the AU also backed Kenya’s plan to defer the cases of key suspects named by Ocampo as the alleged masterminds of post-election violence which saw more than 1,200 people killed in 2007 and 2008.

"The summit approved Kenya's request calling for a suspension of the trials," Ping said during the conference.

Sunil Pal of the CICC said the generally negative relations between AU and ICC are “largely based on misperception.” However, “the same is not true of individual African states.”

“African civil society has remained firmly supportive of the ICC and demanded that their governments make clear their continued obligations to the Court, uphold the rule of law and commitments to end impunity,” he added.