Sudan Islamist leader unwilling to stand for president

Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi said yesterday that he is unwilling to stand as a presidential candidate against Omar al-Beshir, who is defying an international warrant for his arrest.
Turabi's Popular Congress party called for a government of national unity to prepare the country for elections scheduled for February next year.
People aged "60, 70 or 77 like myself, they have children who can become president. My son is now 40 years, and then you have even grandchildren who can join the parliament. So it is better to leave it for other generations," he told reporters at party headquarters.
"It is better to present new people, a new generation for new times. If you are a very wise person you sit back and write books that guide us, that inspire us, or lecture to us... but don't put yourself forward. I don't have that much energy," Turabi said on the sidelines of a news conference.
Sudan's electoral commission announced last week that presidential, parliamentary and regional elections will be held in February 2010 -- the first proper elections in Africa's largest country since 1986.
Turabi is a former mentor of Beshir, having backed him when he toppled a three-year-old democratically elected government in a bloodless coup in June 1989.
Beshir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes committed during the six-year conflict in the western Darfur region.
The accusations include murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture, rape and two counts of war crimes: attacks against civilians and pillaging.
The Popular Congress party has yet to say if it will contest the elections and if so who its presidential candidate will be.
But on Saturday it released a plan for a "transitional government" to settle "pending crises" and "prepare the country for elections."
The party held out an olive branch to political groups in Darfur by suggesting that a vice-president of Sudan should be appointed from the region.
"He is to be chosen by the consensus of the people of Darfur in the armed resistance and others, or immediately elected if consensus cannot be reached," the party said.