African leaders meet to change continent’s image
Jan 24, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — African leaders, meeting in Sudan’s capital, are seeking ways to improve their continent’s image by ridding it of conflicts, diseases, poverty and human rights abuses.
This is a tall order for a region where half the population lives on less than one dollar a day, according to figures provided by the World Bank. To compound problems, the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says more than 60 percent of the estimated 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS are to be found in Africa.
While it’s hard to deal with the complex issues of poverty and diseases in a short term, African leaders say they are making progress in the area of conflict.
”While there are enormous challenges ahead, we have recorded some modest achievements in the areas of peace and stability,” the outgoing African Union (AU) chairman Olusegun Obasanjo told a two-day summit of the 53-member body that opened in Khartoum, Monday.
”The events and developments in Guinea Bissau, Togo, Burundi, Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire mark positive developments in our collective and renewed determination to build a continent free of conflicts and instability,” he said.
”While unfolding crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and again in Cote d’Ivoire give us room for cautious optimism,” he added.
Nonetheless, there’s no shortage of conflicts – including the simmering ones – in Africa. This was evident by the absence in Khartoum of Idris Deby, the president of Chad, who has accused Sudan of backing rebels seeking to overthrow his government. Sudan has denied the charges.
Chad’s foreign minister Ahmad Allami is representing Deby at the talks in Khartoum.
”The developments on the Chad-Sudan border are not very encouraging. The accusations and counter accusations of both Sudan and Chad of aggression in each other’s territory and support for rebels in each other’s territory are cause for serious concern and should be handled with the frankness it deserves in finding out the real aggressor,” Obasanjo said.
”It’s important that we take appropriate steps to discourage acts of destabilisation,” he added.
During the opening session, the AU also took out time to welcome newcomers – presidents Joao Bernardo ‘Nino’ Vieira of Guinea Bissau, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, all elected last year.
Another new face that participants were dying to meet was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, the first elected woman president in Africa. Sirleaf did not show up Monday, as she was addressing a new parliament in the capital Monrovia before joining her colleagues in Khartoum the following day, Obasanjo said.
Conspicuously absent also in Khartoum was Isaiah Affworki, the president of the tiny Red Sea nation of Eritrea. Affworki and Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al Bashir do not see eye-to-eye over allegations that Asmara and Khartoum back each other’s rebel group.
It’s also unlikely that Affworki would sit under the same roof with his nemesis, Meles Zenawi, the president of Ethiopia. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody border war, over a disputed 1000-km stretch that erupted in 1998. In 2002 an independent border commission ruled in favour of Eritrea but Ethiopia refused to abide by the ruling. More than 80,000 people died in the conflict, the bloodiest since Eritrea – a former Italian colony annexed by Emperor Haile Selassie -seceded from Ethiopia in 1993, after a 30-year guerrilla war.
Sitting not far from the high table, where Obasanjo, Bashir and Alpha Konare, the chairman of the Commission of African Union were deliberating the session, Libya’s charismatic and enigmatic leader Muammar Gaddafi left the hall soon after Bashir’s welcoming speech.
Gaddafi, who looks much older now, has reduced the number of gun-toting female bodyguards who usually accompany him whenever he travels abroad.
Three female bodyguards in dark-bluish army jackets instead of the usual camouflaged combat uniforms, accompanied the Libyan leader in the hall, standing right behind him.
The summit started half an hour late, a result of a flurry of lobbying by African leaders prior to its opening. Members were campaigning for the next chairman of the African Union, who would take over from incumbent occupier, Obasanjo.
Sources say African leaders are split down the middle over prospects of Bashir’s chairmanship that they fear would undermine Africa’s credibility as a result of the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.
Before delivering his speech, Obasanjo called for a one-minute silence in the honour of the late Sudanese first-vice president John Garang who perished in an air-crash while returning from neighbouring Uganda in July 2005.
Garang was the leader of the former rebel Sudan’s People Liberation Movement (SPLM) that signed a peace accord that ended a 21-year north-south conflict last year.
But the deal did not cover the separate war currently raging in Darfur that has claimed more than 300,000 lives and displaced over two million people. ”While appreciating progress is being made in the Abuja inter-Sudanese peace talks on Darfur, the situation on the ground in Darfur remains a matter of concern,” Obasanjo said. ”In spite of the efforts made by AU Mission in Sudan, insecurity continues to prevail while the humanitarian situation appears not to have improved.”
”The resolution of the Darfur crisis is critical to the peace and stability of the Sudan and the entire region. Let me say categorically to the negotiating parties in the on-going inter-Sudanese talks that we can ill-afford continued delays in arriving at workable strategies. They must therefore come up with solutions that will help restore peace to the region so that its people can return to a life of normalcy,” the Nigerian leader warned.
Less than 7,000 AU troops are trying to monitor peace in Darfur, an area the size of France.
In his welcome address, Sudanese leader Bashir promised to work with the rest of African countries to maintain peace and stability on the continent.
Sudan is a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity, AU’s predecessor. According to Bashir, Sudan has played a crucial role in the continent’s unity and integration. With its distinctive geographical location, he believes that Sudan could act as a link between black Africa and the Middle East.
(IPS)