The third assembly of African Union heads of state and government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, next week will have to pay serious attention to providing funds to enable the AU to function as it should, South African President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
”The outcomes expected of the AU require that more resources than those that were provided for the functioning of the Organisation for African Unity must be found,” he said in his weekly online newsletter, ANC Today.
”As they meet at our continental headquarters, Africa’s political leaders should be inspired by the progress that our continent is making on many fronts. The very fact of the establishment of the union is itself an outstanding achievement,” he said.
The assembly will have to consider a wide range of issues of immediate relevance to the challenges of the continent — democracy, peace and stability, socio-economic development and international relations.
A victory of the cause of peace, stability, and national reconciliation in Sudan would confirm in a practical way that progress is being made to end all wars on the continent and ensure people live in conditions of peace and security for all.
”The same message will be communicated by the visible achievements represented by the advances we have made with regard to the earlier conflicts in Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi,” Mbeki said.
These successes should also motivate the assembly to take the necessary decisions further to promote the peace agenda, especially in Côte d’Ivoire, with regard to the boundary dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the tension between Eritrea and Sudan.
The successes already achieved should give further impetus to efforts to resolve these problems as speedily as possible and further strengthen capacity to ensure peace and security throughout Africa.
The assembly will also need to devote some time to further strengthening the partnership with the rest of the world represented by the agreements with the Group of 8 (G8) arrived at during the recent G8 summit held in Georgia in the United States, he said.
Africans can be neither pessimistic nor sceptical about their future. They have to be firmly confident about the certainty of a better future for all.
”For us to be pessimistic or sceptical is to give up the fight and resign ourselves to lives of misery.
”This we cannot and will not do. Through our actions, we have to demonstrate that we are firmly committed to do everything possible and necessary to give meaning to our optimism.
”The third assembly of the AU will have to show that we are serious in our determination to honour this commitment,” Mbeki said. — Sapa