* Arab summit to seek joint stand on Bashir indictment * Egypt's Mubarak will not attend By Andrew Hammond DOHA, Reuters (March 28) - The international arrest warrant for Sudan's president will top the agenda of an Arab summit next week, which he may attend despite his indictment for war crimes, host Qatar said on Saturday. Sudan's Omar Hassan al-Bashir has made trips to Egypt, Eritrea, Libya and Ethiopia over the past two weeks, after the warrant was issued by the International Criminal Court accusing him of masterminding atrocities in Darfur. Qatar, which hosts a major U.S. military base, said last week it had faced unspecified pressure not to receive Bashir but nevertheless repeated its invitation for him to attend. "The Palestinian issue and Sudan's situation and a stand on the international court ... will be at the forefront of issues the summit will discuss," Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told an Arab foreign ministers' meeting. Amnesty International called in a statement for leaders of the 22-member Arab League to enforce the indictment, citing Arab appeals to international law over Israel's offensive in Gaza this year which killed around 1,300 Palestinians. Arab League officials in Doha said it was not clear if Bashir would turn up in the Gulf state. Gulf countries are close allies of Washington, traditionally relying on U.S. military support. Some host U.S. forces. Arab leaders have said the summit could provide a chance to promote reconciliation after deep rifts over Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are among the Arab countries which are opposed to Iranian influence in the region, citing the Islamic Republic's backing for Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, and blame Syria for facilitating this. Israel's offensive in Gaza exposed the divisions, with Qatar hosting Hamas, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and a number of Arab leaders in January to discuss the fighting. Egypt and Saudi Arabia refused to attend. Syria's President Bashar al-Assad met Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh this month to try to heal the wounds ahead of the summit. EGYPTIAN SNUB Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit did not attend the ministers' meeting on Saturday and Egyptian state agency MENA said Egypt would send a junior minister to the summit. MENA quoted Aboul Gheit as saying Egypt would be represented at the summit by Moufid Shehab, state minister for legal and assembly affairs. Shehab represented Egypt at an Arab summit in Damascus last year in what was seen as a snub to Syria due to tensions over a political crisis in Lebanon. An analyst in Qatar who asked not to be named said the new snub stemmed from rancour over the Gaza summit in January. Egypt vigorously opposed any recognition of the Doha meeting on Gaza as an Arab summit and scuppered Qatari efforts to have it mentioned in the final declaration of the Kuwait summit. "Circumstances demand from us all a great effort for joint Arab action and reconciliation," said Sheikh Hamad, who is also Qatar's prime minister. But he praised Palestinian armed action, in a sign that the summit could lean towards talk considered too provocative by conservative U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "Palestinian steadfastness lives on thanks to the noble resistance, despite the Israeli military machine, pain, suffering, closures and mistreatment," he said. (Additional reporting by Aziz Kaissouni in Cairo; editing by Andrew Roche)
Israeli soldiers push away a group of protesters made up of Palestinians, Israelis and international activists during a demonstration against Israel's controversial barrier in the West Bank village of Ma'asarah, near ...
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