Ahmedinejad is in Turkey

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in Istanbul for a one-day Islamic summit as pressure mounts on Tehran to agree to a UN-brokered plan on its nuclear programme.

Iran’s president is among the speakers at a meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a 57-state bloc.

Presidents Bashar Assad of Syria and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan are also attending the meeting.

But Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court, has pulled out of the summit.

Sudan’s state-run Suna news agency said “new developments” had required Mr Bashir’s presence in Sudan.

The Turkish government had previously welcomed the attendance of Mr Bashir at the meeting and said that he would not be arrested, as Turkey was not a signatory to the treaty which set up the Hague-based ICC.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan went as far as saying over the weekend that no war crimes had occurred in Darfur and that he would be more comfortable meeting Sudan’s president than the prime minister of Israel.

But the EU, which Turkey hopes to join, wanted the invitation to be withdrawn.