DOHA—Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has accepted Qatar's invitation to attend the annual League of Arab States summit on March 30 despite the issuance of an arrest warrant against him by the ICC, which has asked Qatar to cooperate in executing.

Because it does not have the means execute its warrants, the ICC relies on states to do so. The state of Qatar, however, is not a signatory of the Rome Statute that established the Court. Despite that fact, ICC spokeswoman Laurence Blairon said, “A UN Security Council resolution calls upon all states to cooperate with the court, among them the state of Qatar."

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir, its first against a head of state, on March 4 on seven charges, five counts of crimes committed against humanity and two counts of war crimes committed in Darfur.

Many Arabs regard the arrest warrant as an insult to Sudan's sovereignty and few expect that Qatar will respond to the ICC's request even though Qatar has played a unique role as a mediator of the peace process between the Sudanese government and the opposition, represented by the Justice and Equality movement. The two sides met frequently at the end of February and the beginning of this month in hopes of hammering out a peace agreement between them but were unable to do so.

Sources: Al-Jazeerah / UAE newspaper, The National