Sudan's Beshir in Libya to thank Gaddafi for support

Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, accused of war crimes in Darfur, thanked Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi yesterday for supporting him after the International Criminal Court ordered his arrest.

Mr Beshir, meeting Colonel Gaddafi in his hometown of Sirte on his third foreign trip this week, saluted Libya's "immediate announcement... of an explicit and decisive" rejection of a March 4 ICC arrest warrant, state news agency Jana said.

Only three days after the ICC move, Colonel Gaddafi told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the warrant constituted a "grave precedent against the independence of less powerful states, their sovereignty and their political choices".

Colonel Gaddafi, the current African Union chief, said the ICC was "selective" and that the court, based in The Hague, was "employing a policy of double standards in targeting African and third-world states".

As a UN member Libya is urged to cooperate with the court, but is not obliged to do so because it is not a party to the Rome treaty that created the tribunal. In a statement at the end of the visit, Mr Beshir also welcomed new humanitarian "partners" in Darfur after Sudan expelled a number of Western aid agencies in response to the warrant.

On Tuesday, the United Nations said the humanitarian situation in Darfur remained precarious after the expulsion of 13 international aid agencies.

UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said that despite a "significant effort" by Khartoum, the UN and remaining aid groups to plug some of the gaps, "these are band-aid solutions... not long-term solutions".

He cited food aid, health and nutrition, shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene upon which some 4.7 million Darfur people depend for survival.

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 2003.

Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.

Mr Beshir's trip to Libya was the third time this week he has effectively evaded arrest, after he visited Eritrea and Egypt, two other countries that are not beholden to ICC rules.

After talks on Wednesday in Cairo with President Hosni Mubarak, Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said that, in common with other Arab and African states, Egypt "does not accept the court's manner in dealing with the Sudanese President".