CAIRO: Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir held talks in Cairo yesterday with Egypt's president, defying an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Darfur. Bashir, on his second trip abroad since the court in The Hague issued the warrant on March 4, discussed developments surrounding the ICC ruling with Mubarak before returning home.
He risks arrest when he leaves Sudan because of the ICC warrant, but neighbouring Egypt had not been expected to take any action against him.
Cairo has close ties with Khartoum and has called on the UN Security Council to suspend the warrant.
Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit renewed Egyptian opposition to the warrant for Bashir's arrest.
"There is an Egyptian, Arab and African stance that does not accept the court's manner in dealing with the Sudanese president," Abul Gheit said.
Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol at Sudan's foreign ministry, said Bashir, who also visited Eritrea this week, had wanted to show his defiance of the ICC.
Meanwhile, Qatar is under pressure not to receive Bashir at an Arab summit next week, the state's premier said.
"There are pressures, but you know Qatar well," Shaikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, also Qatar's foreign minister, said. He did not say who was putting pressure on Qatar, a close US ally that hosts a large US military base.
"We presented the invitation and I have come to present it again, as the prime minister and foreign minister. We respect international law and we respect the presence of Bashir in Qatar," he said in Khartoum.
The ICC does not have a police force and calls on signatory states to implement warrants.
Even the United States, where the previous administration described the Darfur conflict as genocidal, said it was under "no legal obligation" to arrest Bashir as it was not a signatory to the Rome statute.
International experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2.7 million driven from their homes in six years of ethnic fighting in Darfur in western Sudan. Khartoum says 10,000 people have died.
In Darfur, armed raiders broke into a refugee camp before midnight and set a fire that killed at least two people and injured four, peacekeepers said
yesterday.
