* Attendance will dismay EU delegates
* ICC arrest warrants have limited Bashir’s travel
* Mbeki presents proposals to settle Abyei dispute
KHARTOUM, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, wanted on war crimes charges, will attend an African-European summit in Libya next week, former South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Saturday.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Bashir alleging he masterminded genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity during the country’s seven-year conflict in the Darfur region.
Libya, which is hosting the Africa-European Union summit on Monday and Tuesday, is not a member of the Hague-based court and is under no obligation to arrest Bashir once he enters its territory.
However, his attendance would cause a diplomatic dilemma for representatives of the EU, all of whose members have signed the court’s charter and are bound to cooperate with it and enforce its arrest warrants.
Mbeki spoke to reporters at the end of a meeting in Khartoum with the Sudanese leader and the president of semi-autonomous south Sudan, Salva Kiir.
“There is the summit meeting of the African Union and the European Union in Libya … President Bashir has to go there for that summit which will be followed immediately by the summit meeting of the peace and security council of the African Union,” he said.
African Union heads of state last year voted not to cooperate with the ICC indictments and Bashir has visited Kenya and Chad, both of them court members.
However, the warrants have severely limited his travel and many Western diplomats have tried to minimise their contacts with Bashir and other wanted officials inside Sudan.
Mbeki met Bashir and Kiir to try and work out an agreement over the ownership of Sudan’s disputed Abyei region, one of the biggest stumbling blocks in peace negotiations between the north and the oil-producing south.
DECADES OF CIVIL WAR
The people of Abyei were promised a referendum on whether to joint the north or the south in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the two parts of the country.
With six weeks to go before the scheduled start of the vote, northern and southern leaders have not agreed on the membership of a committee to organise the plebiscite and remain at loggerheads over who has the right to vote.
Political analysts have said there is a risk both sides could return to conflict over the area and a series of other disputes.
Mbeki said he presented both leaders with proposals on how to resolve the Abyei dispute, but declined to give details. Bashir and Kiir promised to respond next week, he added.
“We were very pleased with the commitment that the parties have shown to look at these things in detail and respond in detail with a view to finding a speedy solution,” Mbeki said.
The Abyei vote is scheduled to start on Jan. 9, the same day as a separate and equally sensitive vote on whether the whole of the south should declare independence or remain part of Sudan.
The theme of the Africa-EU summit will be “Investment, Economic Growth and Job Creation”. (Reporting by Khaled Abdel Aziz, writing by Andrew Heavens; editing by Andrew Dobbie)
