Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has arrived in Qatar on the eve of an Arab League summit.
Al-Bashir was greeted on a red carpet at the international airport in Doha, the Qatari capital, by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, on Sunday before the pair had coffee with Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League.
Al-Bashir's arrival had been the most eagerly anticipated of the delegates attending the two-day conference, after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest three weeks ago.
His visit to Qatar, which is not a signatory to the ICC and therefore not obliged to arrest him, marks the fourth occasion that he has left Sudan since the court's indictment against him.
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, will attend the opening of the meeting despite al-Bashir's presence, a UN official said.
Arab League delegates are likely to be united in their condemnation of the ICC arrest warrant.
Arab governments have also been struggling to respond to Iran's growing political clout, which has greatly increased since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
PHOTO CAPTION
Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir
Al-Jazeera