TURKEY DEFENDS SUDAN LEADER VISIT

BBC NEWS
urope/8347419.stm
2009/11/06 17:23:21 GMT

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has accused the EU of interfering
after Istanbul was asked to reconsider an invitation to the president
of Sudan.

Omar al-Bashir has been indicted for war crimes by the International
Criminal Court (ICC).

But Mr Gul said he was invited to a summit of the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference (OIC), not for bilateral talks with Turkish
officials.

Turkey, which has applied for EU membership, does not recognise
the ICC.

It says it has no plans to arrest Mr Bashir, who is due to attend an
OIC economic summit in Istanbul on Sunday and Monday.

Turkey insists it is not shifting away from its traditionally close
ties to the West.

But the BBC’s Jonathan Head, in Istanbul, says the country is certainly
choosing some controversial new partnerships.

The visit by the Sudanese president comes fresh on the heels of the
Turkish prime minister’s groundbreaking state visit to Iran in October,
when Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that country’s nuclear programme
to be entirely peaceful.

Mr Bashir’s visit to Turkey will be his third in the past 18 months,
but his first since the ICC arrest warrant was issued in March.

A coalition of Turkish human rights groups is protesting against the
visit, our correspondent says.

They have accused the government of double standards for condemning
Israel over its actions in Gaza, and then hosting a president who is
blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur.