Two of the guests invited to the seventh summit of the African Union in The Gambia this weekend are sure to get up the noses of Africa’s best Western friends.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, will share a platform with the leaders of the 53-nation grouping and, who knows, perhaps even upstage the enigmatic Moammar Gadaffi of Libya, who generally uses this forum as his preferred rant against the existing order of things.
Iranian and Venezuelan journalists and diplomats have joined the throng of observers seeking accreditation to this slightly chaotic gathering. They are taking no chances of missing the justification for inviting such maverick figures to Africa’s most prestigious gathering and hearing what Chavez and Ahmadinejad have to say. Both leaders have taken a defiant, almost bellicose, stand on the United States.
Foreign ministers preparing the route for the heads of state and government, who are due to start deliberations on Saturday, have concentrated on two issues: Somalia and Sudan.
Following the adoption of a strategic security plan by the transitional government of Somalia, the summit is likely to ask for a partial relaxation of the United Nations arms embargo against the country.
This would enable peacekeepers from the United Nations, the AU and the seven-nation regional grouping, the Inter Governmental Authority on Development, to send in forces to monitor the shaky ceasefire between the transitional government and the Conservative Islamic Council, which controls the capital, Mogadishu, and most of southern Somalia.
The summit looks set to twist the arm of Sudanese President Omar al Bashir to accept UN peacekeepers in the western region of Darfur.
The mandate for the 7 000 AU peacekeepers in this region — which labours under the label of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — runs out at the end of September.
Foreign ministers are pushing hard to have the summit make it clear that the AU does not have the funds to extend this operation. Any extension of a peacekeeping operation in Darfur will depend on Al Bashir taking a more accommodating line with the UN. This would probably entail sending in African troops in blue helmets under UN auspices, using precedents established in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan added his voice to the debate, telling a BBC interviewer on Thursday that he expects the summit to increase its pressure on Al Bashir to accept UN peacekeepers.
African leaders hope that a newer-than-new AU will emerge from the meeting. The chairperson of the African Commission, former Mali president Alpha Omar Konare, wants more power for the executive of the continental body and a commitment to a far greater union, more in line with the European model.
Konare commented in South Africa last week that the AU needs a vast expansion of powers to achieve the long-term goal of a united states of Africa. He implied that if leaders take the bull by the horns at the summit, an entirely new AU will emerge.
Nevertheless Konare is saying that achieving the ultimate goal will require African leaders to surrender some of their policy positions.
He focuses on areas like peace and security, good governance, food security, health, education, infrastructure development and promoting financial institutions.
Not surprisingly, Konare proposes muscling up his commission to oversee this.
However, the chances of African leaders, too many of whom have yet to be persuaded to trickle down power to their own people, handing sovereignty to a central body at this stage must be regarded as slim.