Darfur and Somalia dominate Africa summit
July 1, 2006 (BANJUL) — A two-day Africa summit opened in Gambia on Saturday with a call for urgent action to deal with conflicts in Somalia and Sudan’s Darfur region, but there seemed scant change of a breakthrough on either issue.
“Today we are urgently and seriously called to address the situation in Darfur and in Somalia,” said African Union (AU) Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare in his opening address to the 53-member body.
The official theme of the six-monthly summit is regional economic integration, but the twin crises in northeast Africa seemed uppermost in the minds of leaders attending the meeting at a flag-bedecked beach hotel outside steamy Banjul.
Konare called for a May 5 peace agreement between the Khartoum government and one Darfur rebel movement to be implemented urgently.
The agreement has been undermined by its rejection by two other rebel groups and bloodshed has continued in the huge western region of Sudan, where tens of thousands of people have died in a 3-year-old rebellion against Khartoum.
Konare said the AU must do everything possible to improve relations between Chad and Sudan, saying their disputes strongly contributed to the Darfur crisis.
Khartoum and Ndjamena accuse each other of supporting rebels on their territories and Sudan said on Saturday it was expelling all the Chadian members of an AU peacekeeping force in Darfur.
But Libyan sources said Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and Chadian leader Idriss Deby held talks at the summit on Saturday mediated by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
In his speech, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the Darfur conflict “one of the worst nightmares in recent history”. He hopes to meet Bashir at the summit.
OBSTACLES
Konare said the AU should give “large-scale support” to Somalia’s weak interim government, and encourage dialogue with Islamists now controlling Mogadishu and a large swathe of the country after defeating secular, U.S.-backed warlords.
An audio message apparently by Osama bin Laden warned on Saturday against sending international peacekeeping troops to Somalia, which is supported both by the AU and the interim government.
Despite the strong desire of African leaders to deal with Somalia and Darfur it was clear after the preparatory meeting of foreign ministers earlier this week that there are big obstacles to a breakthrough on either issue.
Bashir this week again rejected the AU’s plan to hand over peacekeeping in Darfur from its own under-resourced force of 7,000 troops to U.N. soldiers by September 30. Annan calls the rejection “incomprehensible.”
Western and African diplomats in Banjul said that despite widespread revulsion over massacres, rape and pillage in Darfur, the international community had hardly any leverage to pressure Bashir, whose consent is needed for the U.N. force.
There seems little chance either of doing much at the summit about Somalia.
Despite the power of the Islamists, the AU says it will not deal directly with them. The Islamist side is apparently not even represented here.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a special guest at the summit, made a characteristically vituperative speech against the United States and urged Africa to form closer ties with Latin America to combat Washington.
He said Africa must seize greater control of its energy resources, describing the low royalty payments made by some foreign oil companies as “robbery”.
(Reuters)