Sudan’s bid to lead of African Union now in doubt
Jan 13, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — Sudan’s bid to take over the African Union leadership is by no means certain despite a tradition the nation chosen for a summit gathering would automatically chair the alliance, African diplomats, U.N. and U.S. officials said on Friday.
With the African Union fielding troops to help quell the violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region where 2.2 million people are homeless and tens of thousands have died, the conflict of interest has put the alliance in a quandary.
Jan Pronk, the U.N. special envoy for Sudan, told a news conference in New York the United Nations had not taken a position on the issue.
But he said, “I am being told that that decision is not going to be made in this African Union summit,” which begins in Khartoum on Jan. 23 among 53 nations.
Instead, he said there was a possibility Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo would stay in the chair a bit longer.
“I have also understood that the Sudanese, who have their contacts throughout Africa on this particular question are very well aware and also wise,” Pronk said.
Tanzania’s U.N. ambassador, Augustine Mahega, this month’s U.N. Security Council president, said consultations on the new chairmanship were ongoing but acknowledged Sudan’s leadership would be a problem.
“It will create difficulties, and I think the consultations will take into account these difficulties,” Mahega said.
He said the tradition of the country hosting the summit taking over the top AU post was broken last year when Nigeria continued for a second 12-month term.
Libya hosted a July AU summit but its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, faced enough opposition to keep Obasanjo in office.
Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state, noted that 7,000 African Union troops and monitors were in Darfur to oversee a fractured cease-fire between the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and rebels.
“With the situation in Darfur, it obviously makes it very problematic, particularly if he were to assume the presidency,” Frazer said. “It may be a bit of a conflict of interest there.”
The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when rebels launched an uprising against Khartoum, accusing the government of marginalizing the impoverished area. The government turned to Arab militias to put down the rebellion, accused of conducting a campaign of rape, looting and murder.
Frazer told a news conference in Washington the African Union had already decided to delink the chairmanship of the alliance from the summit host.
“And so there’s no necessary or automatic move from the meeting being held in Khartoum to President Bashir becoming the president of the African Union,” Frazer said.
The decision to host the summit in Khartoum was made because of last year’s landmark agreement between the government and rebels in the south and the “hope of peace throughout Sudan,” Frazer said.
The African Union, once called the Organization of African Unity, was originally established in 1963 to promote solidarity and political and economic cooperation among the newly independent African states.
(Reuters)