Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir met on Sunday with his Egyptian counterpart in Cairo, defiant of the International Criminal Court’s two arrest warrants against him for an alleged role in his country’s turbulent western Darfur region.
The visit underlines a renewed interest in cooperation between the two neighbors, after what many saw as a period of neglect in the years before Egypt’s new Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was elected this summer.
Relations largely deteriorated after former President Hosni Mubarak accused Sudan of harboring those suspected of being behind an assassination attempt against him in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1995.
Prior to the trip, London-based Amnesty International called on Cairo to withdraw its invitation to the Sudanese leader or arrest him on arrival, but Egypt does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and instead welcomed al-Bashir at the airport with a delegation led by Vice President Mahmoud Mekki.
It was at least al-Bashir’s third visit to Egypt since an arrest warrant was issued in 2009.