CAIRO: Sudanese President Omar Al-Beshir met his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Wednesday on his second trip visit since an international court ordered his arrest for war crimes in Darfur. Mubarak met Beshir at the airport and held talks that lasted a few hours before boarding a plane for the return flight to Khartoum, the official MENA news agency said. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said the two presidents discussed the International Criminal Court s arrest warrant for Beshir, who faces five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes. There is an Egyptian, Arab and African stance that does not accept the court s manner in dealing with the Sudanese president, Aboul Gheit told reporters after the meeting. The ICC warrant, issued on March 4, was the first against a sitting head of state. There was little chance of Beshir being arrested by Sudan s northern neighbor, with both Egypt and the Arab League rejecting the warrant and saying it threatens peace talks in Sudan. Egypt - like all Arab states except for Jordan - is not a party to the Rome treaty that created the ICC, the world s first permanent war crimes tribunal. The ICC does not have a police force and calls on signatory states to implement warrants. However, all United Nations member states are urged to cooperate with The Hague-based court. Even the United States, where the previous administration described the Darfur conflict as genocidal, said on Tuesday it was under no legal obligation to arrest Beshir as it was not a signatory to the Rome statute. Beshir s visit to key US ally Egypt came just two days after he made a short visit to diplomatically isolated Eritrea, once an arch-foe of Sudan. Doubts have been raised, however, over whether Beshir will attend an Arab summit in Doha at the end of the month, with Sudan s highest religious authority, the Committee of Muslim Scholars, issuing a fatwa, or edict, urging him not to go. The Egypt visit comes amid a worsening humanitarian situation in Darfur after Khartoum ordered the expulsion of 13 international aid agencies in response to the arrest warrant. Aboul Gheit said that Beshir and Mubarak discussed ways to secure the humanitarian situation in Darfur, so as not to allow any foreign party to claim that there is a humanitarian crisis in Darfur. The United Nations warned on Tuesday that it would appeal to international donors for extra funds following the expulsion of 3,142 aid agency staff. UN humanitarian affairs coordinator Ameerah Haq warned in Khartoum that the situation in Darfur would deteriorate further over the coming weeks. By the beginning of May, as the hunger gap approaches, and unless the World Food Program has found partners able to take on the mammoth distribution task, these people will not receive their rations, she said. Up to 650,000 currently do not have access to full health care, she added. Those aid groups which are still able to work in Darfur are also increasingly concerned about the security situation in the region, with a Sudanese working for a Canadian group shot dead at his home on Monday. The United Nations says 300,000 people have died - many from disease and hunger -and 2.7 million been made homeless by the Darfur conflict, which erupted in February 2003. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000. Many African and Arab states, along with key Khartoum ally China, have condemned the ICC move and called for the warrant to be suspended. The Arab League and African Union have vowed to lobby the UN Security Council to suspend the court s proceedings.
