ADDIS ABABA/HARARE: The International Criminal Court (ICC) has become a “political instrument,” Ethiopia’s foreign minister said on Friday, at a meeting in which Africa will review its ties with the Hague-based war crimes tribunal.

Friday’s ministerial meeting of the African Union (AU) and a summit on Saturday have been called to cast a critical eye over the relationship, as ICC prosecutions are under way against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.

Both deny charges that they organized mass violence after Kenya’s disputed 2007 election. Last month, an AU official said the organization would consider the withdrawal of Africa’s 34 signatories of the court’s Rome Statute, but ministers and others have played down talk of such action. Kenya says it has not sought such a move.

Zimbabwe also supports calls for African states to cut ties with the International Criminal Court amid claims that the tribunal targets leaders from the continent, a government official said Friday.

“We are not for it (ICC), we do not agree with the statute,” Joey Bimha, Zimbabwe’s secretary for foreign affairs, told AFP.

Frustration with the ICC has been growing in Africa because the court has only ever convicted one man, an African warlord, and all others it has charged are also Africans. Rights groups have urged the continent not to quit, saying such a move would reverse efforts to end a culture of impunity they say has prevailed in African politics. The 54-member AU, headquartered in Addis Ababa, has backed a Kenyan call for the Kenyan trials to be moved closer to home and appealed to the UN Security Council to defer the two cases. Both requests have until now been without success.