The first summit of the newborn African Union (AU) was set to open in the Ethiopian capital on Monday, with regional conflicts including Ivory Coast high on the agenda.
Some 30 African heads of state and government gathered here on Sunday, with one prominent absentee being Ivory Coast’s embattled President Laurent Gbagbo, AU Commission President Amara Essy said.
Others failing to attend the summit, opening at 0800 GMT, were Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Tanzania’s Benjamin Mkapa. But President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe arrived on Sunday. While the summit was convened to fine-tune the Constitutive Act of the continental body that last year replaced the Organisation of
African Unity (OAU), hotter topics are expected to clamour for attention, including perhaps the looming US-led war on Iraq.
”The heads of state cannot meet to speak only about amendments,” Essy told journalists at Addis Ababa airport as delegations arrived ahead of the two-day summit.
”They have a lot of problems in Africa, so I think it will be an opportunity. We will hold a meeting … to deal with all the conflicts in Africa,” Essy said, mentioning Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi and Sudan.
On Monday, the summiteers are expected to either accept or reject proposals drawn up on Saturday by foreign ministers on amendments to the AU Constitutive Act.
These deal with the role and powers of the AU chairman, and whether the titleholder can be a head of state at the same time as leading the new pan-African body, as well as the role of the African diaspora. – Sapa-AFP