A France-Africa summit will be held in France instead of Egypt after Paris made clear it did not want Sudanese President and indicted war criminal Omar al-Bashir to attend, a minister said on Tuesday.
The summit, aimed at celebrating France’s ties with its former African colonies, was scheduled for January in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
It has been pushed back to May and will take place in France, French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet told Agence France-Presse.
”There were several diplomatic difficulties,” Joyandet said, adding that Egypt was in full agreement with the decision to change the venue.
Joyandet last month said France was seeking a ”diplomatic solution” to allow the summit to take place but without al-Bashir, who has been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Al-Bashir’s presence at the Egypt summit would have embarrassed France, a fervent supporter of the decision by the International Criminal Court to indict al-Bashir in March.
Egypt had said it could not avoid inviting al-Bashir, who is one of its allies in the region.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Abul Gheit told the London-based Arabic daily Asharq Alawsat that France would host the summit and avoid having to invite al-Bashir.
”The idea now is to hold the summit and the ministerial meeting that precedes it in France,” Abul Gheit said.
Joyandet said the summit would allow France to ”look at our relationship with Africa with a view to the future instead of the past”.
An official from President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office also confirmed the decision to change the venue, although no decision has been made on the exact location.
Held every two years, the last 2007 France-Africa summit was in the Riviera city of Cannes and was former president Jacques Chirac’s farewell to the grouping. — AFP
