Presence of Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes in Darfur, is an extraordinary snub to the United Nations secretary general.
Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for war crimes in Darfur, defied the international community on Sunday night by showing up at an Arab summit already bitterly divided over Iran and other Middle East issues.
His arrival in the Qatari capital, Doha, seemed set to embarrass the Arab League at its annual conference, though the league is also expected publicly to urge the International Criminal Court to drop the unprecedented charges.
It had been thought until almost the last minute that al-Bashir would stay away. His presence will be a extraordinary snub to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who is scheduled to attend Monday’s opening session.
Last week al-Bashir paid brief visits to neighbouring Egypt, Libya and non-Arab Eritrea, but his presence in Doha aligns the 22-member league with his pariah status over alleged atrocities in Darfur.
Libya’s Moammar Gadaffi condemned the ICC arrest warrant as ”first-world terrorism” and an example of double standards. ”If we allow such a thing … we should also try those who killed hundreds and millions of children in Iraq and in Gaza.”
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other western-backed Arab states are also hoping fervently that Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, does not take up an invitation to attend the summit as an observer.
Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, and several other leaders had already made clear they would not come to an event that had been intended to advertise Arab reconciliation after the disarray during Israel’s recent onslaught on Gaza.
No fewer than four rival summits were held in as many days in January as popular outrage swelled at the impotence of Arab governments in the face of three weeks of Israeli attacks.
It had been hoped that reconciliation between rival Palestinian factions would be the centrepiece of the summit, but Fatah, in control of the West Bank, and Hamas running Gaza, remain at loggerheads. Egypt has been leading mediation efforts and is angry that Syria failed to bring pressure to bear on Hamas.
The conservative states are also furious with Qatar, famous for its maverick foreign policy, for reaching out to Iran, which backs Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and whose nuclear ambitions are a source of deep concern in the region.
Amr Moussa, secretary general of the league, pledged to work on ”managing the existing rifts to defuse, or at least decrease, the tensions”.
Analysts will be watching closely to see what the summit says about the 2002 Arab peace initiative, which offers Israel the recognition of the entire league in exchange for a return to 1967 borders and the creation of a Palestinian state.
Arab hopes for the revival of the peace process with intensive US involvement were high when Barack Obama entered office but have faded because of the depth of the global economic crisis and the prospect of a rightwing government in Israel. – guardian.co.uk