Istanbul  - Sudan's President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir has left for an African summit meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul on Monday despite a threatened warrant for his arrest in relation to actions by his government in the Darfur region of Sudan, Turkish media reported.

The summit to take place starting Tuesday is also to be attended by various African heads of state and government along with Turkish representatives to discuss widening of cooperation.

Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in July requested the court issue a warrant for the arrest of al-Bashir on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Darfur region of western Sudan.

The United Nations estimates that the number of victims in five years of the ongoing conflict to be around 300,000 dead and 2.5 million driven from their homes.

Al-Bashir rejected the threatened ICC warrant as slander and rejected any cooperation with the court.

A spokesman for the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that "Turkey keeps international law (but) as long as there isn't been any final decision over the warrant or any unambiguous mandate, we see no need to act." (dpa)