text: Coming to America? | The Economist
  Pomegranate | Sudan's president and the UN
  OMAR BASHIR, the Sudanese president who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes, has few travel options available to him these days. But keen to attend the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York, he has applied for a visa to the United States. Samantha Power, America's ambassador to the UN, says such a visit would be inappropriate and that Mr Bashir should turn himself in to the ICC, but she has stopped short of saying his visa would be rejected. Indeed it is unclear what legal grounds America might have for so doing.
  The Headquarters Agreement with the UN signed in 1947 calls on America swiftly to grant visas to all attendees. The only exception is when doing so would pose a national security risk to America. The US is not party to the ICC Rome Statue so would be under no obligation to arrest Mr Bashir, but the court's judges have asked it do so if he does go.
  The security risk clause was previously cited in 1988 in rejecting the visa request of Yasser Arafat, the then head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), who wanted to address the UN General Assembly. The United States claimed that Mr Arafat posed a risk because of the PLO's connections with terrorists who targeted Americans. The UN legal counsel was outraged by the decision, arguing that the security exception applies only to travel other than to the headquarters and that there was no reason to believe that Arafat would be a security threat.
  The argument used against Mr Arafat could perhaps be used again in this instance: Mr Bashir allegedly harboured Osama bin Laden for five years in the 1990s, though he has since offered to work with America to combat terrorism. More likely, America could delay granting a visa until after the UN General Assembly. A diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks in 2009 indicated that foreign diplomats were often not given a visa decision until after the event they wished to attend. For the moment, Mr Bashir waits patiently in Khartoum.