Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir flew in to Qatar on Sunday for an Arab summit, in his fourth foreign trip since an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

State television showed Beshir being greeted by Qatar's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani and Arab League chief Amr Mussa.

Speculation had been rife in Doha that Beshir could stay away from the summit to avoid embarrassing Qatar, although the Gulf state is not bound by the rules of the International Criminal Court which indicted the president.

AFP