Sudan on Monday offered to withdraw its bid to head the African Union to avoid a split among leaders of the 53-nation body gathered in Khartoum for a summit.
The bid from President Omar el-Beshir, who seized power in a 1989 coup, caused unease as the AU is mediating talks to end the bloodshed in Darfur, where 300 000 people have died in three years.
”We don’t want to make any cracks in the union. We don’t want to make any divisions,” presidential adviser Mustapha Osman Ismail told reporters as African leaders met behind closed doors to try to decide on a new leader for the pan-African body. ”If that means Sudan should withdraw, we will withdraw.”
The only official candidate for the AU chair, Sudan had won support from Egypt and Libya for its bid but West and Southern African governments were reluctant to give Khartoum the high-profile position.
Human rights groups had also warned that giving Sudan the AU chair would be tantamount to rewarding a regime accused by the United States of genocide in Darfur and would damage the credibility of the AU, set up four years ago with a new commitment to peace.
Late on Monday, US President George Bush expressed the US’s ”concern” about the prospect of Sudan taking over the presidency, saying it would ”put them the titular head of the troops on the ground”.
Sudan’s offer to step down as a candidate paved the way for a resolution to a row over the AU chairmanship that had overshadowed the summit called to discuss the continent’s problems of war, poverty and disease.
Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguessou was named as a possible contender for the AU chair, along with Gabon’s Omar Bongo, while Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo could be asked to stay on in the post he has held since 2004, sources said.
A five-nation working group set up by Obasanjo and led by Botswana had asked President Omar al-Beshir to withdraw Sudan’s candidacy during a meeting late on Sunday, sources said.
Algeria, Botswana, Ethiopia, Gabon and Niger — representing all the African regions — are to form a committee that will present a proposal on the AU chair during the second day of the AU summit on Tuesday.
”Talks are already under way, but the committee will meet formally tomorrow [Tuesday] morning and will then make a proposal,” Gabonese foreign ministry director Emmanuel Nzanze Mendoume said.
Darfur rebels taking part in AU-sponsored peace talks in Abuja had warned they would pull out of the negotiations if Sudan was given the presidency of the AU.
About 300 000 people have been killed and more than two million displaced since 2003 in fighting between Darfur rebels and government forces backed by militias, triggering one of the continent’s worst humanitarian crises.
The AU deployed a 7 000-strong peacekeeping force to the zone in 2004, but it has been unable to put a stop to the bloodshed.
In an apparent reference to the split over Khartoum’s candidacy, Obasanjo urged leaders to spare no effort ”to consolidate the achievements already recorded”.
”The … new Africa that we midwife must not be sacrificed at the altar of narrow interests of individuals and groups,” Obasanjo said in his address to the meeting attended by about 30 heads of states. — Sapa-AFP