Addis Ababa

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin expressed confidence on Wednesday that a long-awaited African Union peacekeeping force would be deployed to war-torn Somalia within the month. A day after AU leaders wrapped up a summit in Addis Ababa, Mesfin told reporters the 8 000-strong mission would replace Ethiopian troops due to return home shortly.

An African Union summit on Tuesday discussed raising thousands more troops for a peacekeeping force in Somalia after defusing a potentially damaging row over Sudan. The force, essential to avoid a dangerous vacuum when Ethiopian troops leave Somalia within weeks, needs 4 000 more troops to bring it up to projected strength of almost 8 000.

South African President Thabo Mbeki pledged on Monday to ensure the first-ever World Cup to be staged on African soil will benefit the whole of the world’s poorest continent. ”We have to make absolutely certain that 2010 will benefit Africa and the African diaspora,” Mbeki said in a speech at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Sudan lost the leadership of the African Union for a second time after the pan-African group on Monday awarded the rotating chair to Ghana because of widespread outrage over continuing bloodshed in Darfur. Alpha Oumar Konare, the AU’s top diplomat, told reporters Ghanaian President John Kufuor would become chairperson. ”By consensus it is President Kufuor.”

The United States is ready to contribute air support to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, a leading official said on Monday. US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said that she had made the offer during talks on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa with the head of the AU Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare.

The head of the African Union urged member countries late on Thursday to speedily supply troops to a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, ahead of a high-level AU summit next week. The AU is trying to cobble together an 8 000-strong force to prevent a possible security vacuum in the Horn of Africa nation as Ethiopian troops are set to withdraw.

A diplomatic deadlock is expected at a meeting of African leaders in Ethiopia over whether Sudan, accused of war crimes in its Darfur region, will become the African Union (AU) chair as promised a year ago. With around 7 000 AU troops struggling to stem the violence in remote Darfur and AU mediation of peace talks, hosts Sudan were denied the chairmanship.

Abdulrahman Abdulqadir was watching his favourite football team Arsenal on satellite television when the seven gunmen burst into his shack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. ”They were shouting ‘This is not allowed’, ‘This is against Islam’,” said the 18-year-old electrical engineering student.

An African Union mission to Somalia recommended on Friday that it send peacekeepers for six months before handing over to the United Nations to tame a nation in chaos for 16 years. Diplomats see international peacekeepers as the only way to stabilise Somalia once Ethiopian troops return home.

The African Union’s main security forum will hold a special session at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday to discuss a proposed peacekeeping force for Somalia, a statement said. The Peace and Security Council meeting will include a debate on a new report into the situation in the volatile Horn of Africa state.

An Ethiopian court sentenced former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam to life in prison for genocide on Thursday, but the former dictator is exiled, safe from the punishment in Zimbabwe. After a 12-year trial, Mengistu was found guilty in absentia of killing thousands of people during a 17-year reign that began in 1974.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday played down a seven-day deadline from powerful Islamists in neighbouring Somalia to withdraw his troops or face major attacks. A defiant Meles said he would not acquiesce to the ultimatum from the Islamists, who have declared holy war on Ethiopian troops in Somalia.

Ethiopia’s former ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam was found guilty in absentia of genocide on Tuesday at the end of a 12-year trial over his bloody rule. Mengistu, who now lives in Zimbabwe, was accused with top members of his military government of killing thousands during a 17-year rule that began with the toppling of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and included war, purges and famine.

Somalia’s government on Tuesday ruled out peace talks with the country’s powerful Islamic movement, citing truce violations, which heightened fears of an all-out war in the African nation. Three days after the Islamists seized Dinsoor township, the government ruled out participating in the next round of peace talks.

Ethiopia’s Parliament on Thursday authorised "any legal action" against "the clear and present danger" posed by powerful Islamists in neighbouring Somalia, ratcheting up fears for war. Lawmakers voted in favour of a resolution that called the Islamists, now on the brink of war with the weak Ethiopian-backed Somali government, a "clear and present danger".

Shivering under a tattered blanket, a young woman tries to sleep at the foot of the mist-shrouded Entoto Mountain, north of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. ”I decided to come to Entoto to seek a cure from the holy water after a doctor told me that I am HIV-positive,” Abebech Alemu (35) said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Thursday said his country had completed preparations for war with a powerful Somali Islamic movement after efforts for dialogue failed. Meles said the Islamists, who have declared a holy war on Ethiopian troops deployed to protect the weak Somali government, represented a clear threat to his country.

Ethiopia and Eritrea on Monday rejected a proposal put forward by an independent boundary commission as a way around a four-year impasse over the demarcation of their shared border. The Horn of Africa neighbors fought a war from 1998 to 2000 over a frontier area of dusty villages and scrubby plains during which 70 000 people were killed.

The African Union on Saturday reported a heavy civilian toll after Sudanese forces and allied militia this week conducted raids in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur. The AU Mission in Sudan reported a ”heavy toll on the civilian population”.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan opened high-level talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Thursday with senior African Union officials to seek solutions to the crisis in Sudan’s troubled western Darfur region. But prospects for the meeting reaching consensus on a way forward remained unclear.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan pledged on Thursday to work to improve welfare in Africa, the world’s poorest continent, after he retires from his position later this year. On his last tours in Africa as the world body’s chief, Annan told participants at the fifth African Development Forum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, that his farewell was ”not an adieu, but very much an au revoir”.

The African Union on Tuesday hailed the generally peaceful conduct of the second-round presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and called for calm as the vast nation awaits final results. In a statement released in Ethiopia, AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare welcomed ”the smooth conduct of the second round of the presidential election in the DRC”.

Four days of devastating floods along Ethiopia’s desolate eastern border have killed more than 60 people, and prowling crocodiles were hampering rescue efforts as rain continued to fall, officials said on Tuesday. The floods began on Friday when the Shebelle River overflowed its banks in the Ogaden region, more than 1 000km from the capital, Addis Ababa.

An Ethiopian parliamentary probe has determined the death toll from post-election violence last year was triple the government’s earlier figure but found no evidence of excessive force by authorities, officials said on Thursday. A panel investigating two explosions of unrest after the disputed May 2005 polls said 199 people died, more than three times the original official number of 54.