Summit focuses on United States of Africa plan

ACCRA – Leaders of the African Union began a three-day summit here yesterday focused on plans to forge a confederation of states with an acknowledgement the continent’s current system of governance had to improve.

AU commission president Alpha Oumar Konare launched the three-day conference in the Ghanaian capital with a progress report of some of the continent’s hotspots and called for the United Nations to pressure Sudan to accept a long-heralded hybrid force in the troubled Darfur region. But he also urged the leaders of the 53 nations that make up the world’s poorest continent to fully think through how they could best strengthen their institutions.”There’s a real need for change, for transformation of our experience.The African Union Commission which should be the engine for the union does not have a well-defined status and character,” said Konare.”We need to have a strong decision today because integration is a major political action …A strong African leadership should grasp all the issues to speed up the integration process.”While previous summits have been dominated by crises in individual countries, the latest gathering is almost entirely devoted to debating the creation of what has been dubbed by some as the United States of Africa.One of those in town is the Libyan leader Muamer Gaddafi, seen as the prime instigator behind the project which he would like to see result in a common foreign and defence policy.Some leaders, such as host President John Kufuor, are broadly supportive of the idea of a closer union and he will preside over the first main topic on the agenda after the opening ceremony, entitled the grand debate on union government.The founding president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was the first major proponent of the idea that Africa could only hope to be a force for good through unity.Exactly 50 years after Ghana became the first African nation to free itself of colonialism, the continent still has no permanent representative on the United Nations Security Council.Leaders of larger countries, such as South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria’s Umaru Yar’Adua are thought to be much less keen on the idea of a closer federation.Mbeki caustically remarked at the last summit in January, in Addis Ababa, that the ‘foundations’ of the AU needed to be cemented before anything more ambitious was attempted.Indeed, it is only five years since the AU was formally established as a new, improved version of the Organisation of African Union.However, its failure at the last summit to persuade anyone but Uganda to send troops on a peacekeeping mission to Somalia has underlined shortcomings that critics say can only be overcome with a common foreign and defence policy.Events in Addis Ababa were also marred by the continued bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region which effectively scuppered Khartoum’s ambitions of becoming president of the organisationNampa-AFPBut he also urged the leaders of the 53 nations that make up the world’s poorest continent to fully think through how they could best strengthen their institutions.”There’s a real need for change, for transformation of our experience.The African Union Commission which should be the engine for the union does not have a well-defined status and character,” said Konare.”We need to have a strong decision today because integration is a major political action …A strong African leadership should grasp all the issues to speed up the integration process.”While previous summits have been dominated by crises in individual countries, the latest gathering is almost entirely devoted to debating the creation of what has been dubbed by some as the United States of Africa.One of those in town is the Libyan leader Muamer Gaddafi, seen as the prime instigator behind the project which he would like to see result in a common foreign and defence policy.Some leaders, such as host President John Kufuor, are broadly supportive of the idea of a closer union and he will preside over the first main topic on the agenda after the opening ceremony, entitled the grand debate on union government.The founding president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was the first major proponent of the idea that Africa could only hope to be a force for good through unity.Exactly 50 years after Ghana became the first African nation to free itself of colonialism, the continent still has no permanent representative on the United Nations Security Council.Leaders of larger countries, such as South African President Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria’s Umaru Yar’Adua are thought to be much less keen on the idea of a closer federation.Mbeki caustically remarked at the last summit in January, in Addis Ababa, that the ‘foundations’ of the AU needed to be cemented before anything more ambitious was attempted.Indeed, it is only five years since the AU was formally established as a new, improved version of the Organisation of African Union.However, its failure at the last summit to persuade anyone but Uganda to send troops on a peacekeeping mission to Somalia has underlined shortcomings that critics say can only be overcome with a common foreign and defence policy.Events in Addis Ababa were also marred by the continued bloodshed in Sudan’s Darfur region which effectively scuppered Khartoum’s ambitions of becoming president of the organisation Nampa-AFP