African Union ordinary summit in Sudan postponed

KHARTOUM, Sudan, Nov 10, 2004 (PANA) — The African Union (AU) annual summit scheduled for June 2005 in Sudan has been postponed to November 2005, authoritative sources in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in Khartoum Wednesday.

The sources told PANA that an extra-ordinary AU summit would now take place in the Libyan city of Sirte in June 2005 to address urgent issues affecting the continent.

The last AU ordinary summit last July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, had fixed the organisation’s next regular summit for June in the Sudanese capital.

The reason for the postponement of the regular summit was not
immediately clear, but the Sudanese Foreign Ministry sources
have also indicated that the Khartoum government was in consultation with African leaders to push the summit forward to January 2006 to coincide with Sudan’s independence anniversary celebration.