African leaders meeting in Maputo offered wide support on Friday for a Peace and Security Council which will be able to send peacekeeping troops to quash genocidal wars on the continent.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said heads of state meeting at the second summit of the African Union (AU) discussed defence and the setting up of the council at a closed session.
”It was widely supported,” he said, but added that no decisions had been made.
The establishment of the council is regarded as a top priority at the summit.
The body is loosely modelled on the United Nations Security Council and will have the power to deploy what will be called the African Standby Force to intervene in wars involving crimes against humanity.
Outgoing African Union (AU) chair Thabo Mbeki of South Africa said at the opening of the three-day summit on Thursday that a decision should be made to get the council off the ground by the end of the year.
By Friday, 17 countries had ratified its protocol — five more than at the beginning of the week when only 12 had endorsed it. A minimum of 27 are required.
Mbeki urged countries dragging their feet to move into action.
”Those of us who are delaying with the ratifications of the protocol must please deal with that question so we can move ahead,” he told delegates.
The council is crucial for Africa which needs to show the rest of the world that it is capable of solving its own problems ‒ and the some 20 conflicts on the continent.
Thee summit is discussing about 10 conflicts, including those in the huge Great Lakes region in central Africa, Liberia and the Ivory Coast.
The European Union envoy to the Great Lakes, Aldo Ajello, however expressed reservations about the possibility of peace in the central African region in an interview with state-run Radio Mozambique earlier Friday.
”There is no political will in the Great Lakes with some deliberately promoting hostilities for personal gains,” he said.
European Commission chair Romano Prodi said the European Union was committed to providing support for peacekeeping in Africa.
”I came here to demonstrate the importance of Africa to the European Union and to propose resources to peacekeeping in Africa,” he said.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan was supposed to have met with representatives from the Great Lakes on the fringes of the AU summit, but the meeting was called off because Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila is absent from Maputo.
The presidents of the DRC, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Africa would have attended the meeting with Annan.
”That meeting will now have to wait until they can meet on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in December,” said Bene M’Poko, DRC ambassador in Pretoria.
”The president [Kabila] is the only working legal institution in the transitional government. Had he come here it would have delayed the progress we need to make on implementing that government,” he added.
The DRC has been ravaged by a war that erupted in August 1998, drawing in several surrounding countries, such as Burundi, whose troops crossed the border to protect their own country from rebels.
As many as three million died in the conflict, many from war induced illnesses and starvation.
South Africa facilitated a peace agreement between the warring parties, which led to Kabila naming a government of national unity on June 30.
The country is now preparing for the first democratic elections since those on independence from Belgium in 1960.
However, fighting between tribes in the northeastern Ituri region is continuing and an international peace-keeping force has been deployed in the area.
Meanwhile, in Burundi, where South Africa has 1 000 soldiers protecting politicians in its transitional government, some 50 people have been killed in recent rebel attacks.
In west Africa, the regional Economic Community of West African States grouping has announced that it will deploy between 1 000 and 1 500 troops in Liberia, whose embattled President Charles Taylor has been offered asylum by Nigeria.
Taylor is notably absent from the summit, where heads of state constantly field questions on the wars in Africa.
The assembly elected seven of the eight commissioners Friday, five of them women, who will be tasked with the day to day running of the AU. – Sapa-AFP