Sudanese president to visit Mauritania next week: AMI news agency

December 15, 2009 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir will make a trip next Monday to Nouakchott, “informed sources” have told the Mauritanian news agency (AMI) today.

The agency said that Bashir’s visit is the “first of its kind by a head of state to Mauritania” since General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz won the presidential elections last July. Abdel Aziz had ousted Mauritania’s first democratically elected leader in a coup last year.

There was no parallel confirmation of the visit by Sudanese state media. The Mauritanian foreign minister Naha bint Mukanass met with Bashir in Khartoum last month in a visit aimed at reenergizing bilateral relations.

Both sides at the time agreed to hold the joint ministerial meeting in mid-December headed by the foreign ministers in Sudan and Mauritania.

Sudan telecom company (Sudatel) has a bought a license two years ago to become Mauritania’s third mobile phone service provider.

Mauritania is the newest spot for Bashir trips since the arrest warrant issued for him last March by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges that he masterminded a campaign to exterminate African tribes in Sudan’s Western region of Darfur.

The former French colony is not an ICC state party and this has legal obligation to arrest Bashir if he sets foot on its territory. The Sudanese head of state has limited his travels to regional countries that are not signatories of the Rome Statute.

Bashir has turned down several invitations in the last few months to attend events in Uganda, Nigeria, Venezuela, Denmark, Turkey, South Africa and US for fear of arrest.

This week it was announced that the France-Africa summit due to be held in Egypt next year has been cancelled over French concerns at the invitation of Bashir. The decision was made after Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt met in Paris on Monday.

(ST)