(CNSNews.com) – The Danish government has invited 191 world leader to attend the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month, including three controversial figures who are forbidden to travel to any European Union member state.
 
Denmark says it has no choice but to invite the leaders of Sudan, Zimbabwe and Burma, given that the conference is a United Nations-sponsored affair.
 
The invitation to Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is especially controversial because he is the subject of an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for alleged crimes against humanity in Darfur. The U.N. says up to 300,000 people have died in Darfur since the conflict erupted in 2003.
 
Just two weeks ago, Turkey drew protests from the E.U. for inviting Bashir to an Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in Istanbul. (It is not clear whether Turkey, which aspires to join the E.U., backed down or whether the decision was Sudan’s, but in the end Bashir never attended.)
 
But the December climate gathering is different, Denmark says.
 
A foreign ministry legal official, Thomas Winkler, was quoted by Danish media as saying that because the climate conference is a U.N. event, it is obligated to invite all heads of government, without exception.
 
Since the ICC arrest warrant was issued last March, the Sudanese leader has also traveled to several other Muslim countries, including Egypt, Libya and Qatar. Unlike those countries, Denmark has signed and ratified the Rome Statute – which created the ICC – and is a keen supporter of the tribunal.
 
Rome Statute signatories are obliged to honor arrest warrants issued by the ICC.
 
The human rights group Amnesty International urged Denmark to make it clear that Bashir would be arrested if he enters the country, saying that it “has a duty to arrest and surrender any person within its territory who is subject to an arrest warrant issued by the ICC.”
 
It was not clear this week whether or not Bashir intends to take up the Danish invitation.
 
Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N., Abdel-Mahmood Abdel-Haleem, said in a BBC television “Hardtalk” interview Monday that while there was nothing preventing Bashir from going “anywhere,” the decision on visiting Denmark “has its own political calculations” because of that country’s role in the 2005 Mohammed cartoon controversy.
 
The publication by Danish newspapers of cartoons satirizing Mohammed caused a furor in the Islamic world.
 
“After the defamation and the characterization of prophet Mohammed any Muslim leader will find it difficult to go to Copenhagen,” Abdel-Haleem told the BBC.
 
The ambassador disputed the notion that Sudan was being isolated as a result of the ICC indictment and warrant. He pointed out that the country was elected as chairman of the G77 and China group of developing nations this year.

At a meeting last week of the 100 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo claimed that Bashir has been marginalized since being indicted.
 
Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has also invited Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and Burmese junta leader Than Shwe to attend the climate conference. Both are prohibited under E.U. sanctions from entering the 27-member bloc.
 
Zimbabwe has confirmed Mugabe will attend. Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper quoted the foreign affairs spokesman for the center-right Liberal Party, Soren Pind, as saying he did not understand what Mugabe would do in Denmark.
 
“A person like him should be excluded from taking part in such summits,” Pind said, “but unfortunately that’s how the U.N. system is.”