At this week’s annual gathering of leaders of the most troubled continent on the globe, a little change — better still, reduction — in conflict would have been welcome. But there they were again in Addis Ababa. The usual suspects.
Sudan should have escaped the list of hot spots, as talks between the Muslim north and Christian south look set to end the continent’s longest running civil war. But Darfur in the west threatens to become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The continent’s Peace and Security Council urged the government of Sudan to “refrain from any further actions that could constitute violations of the letter and spirit of all the agreements signed so far.”
In African Union-speak this is as close as it gets to saying Sudan has been breaking deals already made. It is way short of United States threats to impose sanctions on Khartoum if the Sudanese government does not stop arming the militia responsible for killing more than 10 000 people and displacing more than a million.
Before the AU summit, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan went to Darfur and to neighbouring Chad to see Sudanese refugees who have fled the fighting. He stopped short of characterising what was happening in Darfur as ethnic cleansing.
Wary of punitive threats from the UN, Sudan played a careful role, promising to adhere to whatever decision the AU summit reached. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismael promised to hunt down the militiamen. He denied there was famine and genocide in Darfur.
But the decision of the Peace and Security Council to send 300 armed men to protect the 60 AU ceasefire observers indicates the seriousness of the situation there.
Hopes are pinned on a meeting later this month, although Darfur’s two main liberation groups have indicated they will not attend.
Following renewed fighting in the east, border tension with Rwanda and an attempted coup in Kinshasa last month, the Democratic Republic of Congo has re-emerged as a hot spot.
Incensed at a report that lack of trust and confidence was paralysing his transitional government, DRC President Joseph Kabila stayed away from the summit. He would not have been able to vote or speak in Addis anyway, because his government is so far behind in payments to the AU.
Kabila’s absence meant no binding decisions could be taken at a mini-summit on the DRC led by Annan.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, buoyed by the AU report vindicating his denial that his troops are in the DRC, said they had managed pretty well without Kabila.
Annan’s spokesperson, Fred Eck-hart, said the parties were so far apart that the secretary general had not even tried agreeing on a document.
Current AU chairperson Olusegun Obasanjo seems to have taken up the reins as mediator on the DRC. President Thabo Mbeki did not attend the mini-summit.
Kabila and Kagame will be brought together again later this month to flesh out an agreement on confidence-building and verification mechanisms to end the ethnic violence in the eastern DRC.
The summit was tougher on the last Burundian rebel group still under arms for not joining the transitional government than it was on interim President Domitien Ndayizeye for trying to increase his 18-month tenure. It repeated earlier warnings of dealing with the Forces for National Liberation of Agathon Rwasa as terrorists if they do not join the peace process.
Ivorean President Laurent Gbagbo was lashed by participants in another mini-summit for dragging his heels on implementing the peace process agreed to last year. This summit was more even-handed and urged the opposition — both armed and political — to get back into the process they quit because of Gbagbo’s lack of political will.
Host President Meles Zenawi promised that a military solution was not an option in settling his country’s ongoing border dispute with Eritrea. Yet that wrangle remains firmly on the AU’s books.
Annan witnessed the signing of an agreement between President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea and President Omar Bongo of Gabon settling a dispute about islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Since the 32-year dispute has been considerably spiced up by the discovery of oil in the region, it is not surprising the settlement was cited as an African example of reason and good sense.
Nguema used his moment of limelight with his peers to charge former colonial power Spain with complicity in the abortive coup attempt for which men are being held in both Malabo and Harare.