BEIJING (Reuters) - Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir failed to show up on time Monday in the Chinese capital for talks with his country's most powerful patron.
An aide at the Sudanese ambassador's office in Tehran, where Bashir has been visiting, said: "He is still in Tehran and will leave in a few hours." The aide asked not to be identified and declined to give further details.
Bashir, who faces indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes, had been due to arrive in Beijing early Monday for talks that will focus on Sudan's impending split into two countries.
Chinese Foreign Ministry officials said they were unsure of the reason for the delay. Sudanese officials in Khartoum were not immediately available for comment.
"We don't know," said a Chinese worker at the Sudanese embassy in Beijing, when asked about the delay. Sudanese diplomats at the embassy were not available to comment.
Bashir had been scheduled to have talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao late in the afternoon. But Chinese Foreign Ministry officials said the events would be postponed and rescheduled.
Analysts have said Bashir is likely to use his four-day visit to China to reassure Chinese leaders that their investments and energy stake in Sudan will not be threatened by the north-south split of his country scheduled for July 9.
Before leaving Khartoum, Bashir told Chinese media the impending split risked triggering "time bombs," but said his government's bond with China would not be shaken by Beijing's courting of the secessionist south.
Beijing has been building ties with the emerging state in southern Sudan but continues to be one of the major supporters of Bashir, who faces indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes charges stemming from long-running fighting in the Darfur region.
China's special envoy for Africa affairs and former envoy to Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region, Liu Guijin, told reporters last week that China had "done a lot of work to persuade" the north to implement the peace agreement and referendum.
Khartoum seized the main town in the north-south border region of Abyei on May 21, raising fears the two sides could return to conflict. But Sudan's military and the south's Sudan People's Liberation Army last week agreed to withdraw their forces in favour of Ethiopian peacekeepers.
(Reporting by Chris Buckley and Tyra Dempster in Beijing, Alexander Dziadosz in Khartoum, and Parisa Hafezi in Tehran; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)
