PARIS, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Plans to hold a France-Africa summit in Egypt in February have been dropped because Paris disagreed with Cairo's decision to invite Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who faces an international arrest warrant.

Officials at the office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday the summit would instead be held in France in May, adding that Sarkozy and his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak had agreed on the change of plan on Monday.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant against Bashir in March, accusing him of crimes against humanity in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.

Bashir has defied the ICC a number of times, travelling to several countries in Africa and the Middle East, including Egypt. Mubarak wanted to invite him to the France-Africa summit that was supposed to take place in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Sarkozy had sent French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux to Cairo in October to try to persuade Mubarak to drop the invitation. In the end, the two presidents agreed to change the venue during a lunch in Paris on Monday, officials said. (Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou, editing by Estelle Shirbon/David Stamp)

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