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Addis Ababa (Agenzia Fides) – The crises in Somalia, Madagascar, Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, and Sudan; economic development and reform of internal groups of the Union, are among the main topics for discussion at the 12th Summit of the African Union, which was opened on February 1 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and central headquarters of the AU.
The two main themes of the Summit are: “infrastructural development in Africa,” especially in terms of transportation and energy, and the Libyan proposal to establish “a Union government,” however the developments in the crises of Madagascar, Somalia, and Zimbabwe are the focus of the participants.
In Somalia, on January 31, the Parliament in Djibouti elected a new President, Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a “moderate” Muslim, who succeeds Abdullahi Yousuf Ahmed. The new President was the head of the Union of Islamic Courts, whose troops took over Mogadishu in 2006, expelling the “war lords.” The Islamic Courts maintained hold of the government for nearly 6 months, before being expelled themselves by Ethiopian troops, in support of a transitional government recognized by the international community. Ahmed represents Somalia at the AU Summit.
In Zimbabwe, on the eve of the Summit, there seems to have been a turn of events: the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party, accepted becoming part of a government of national unity, along with the ZANU-PF, the party of President Robert Mugabe. The leader of the MDC, Morgan Tsvangirai, will be the Prime Minister: he is scheduled to swear in on February 11. The shared power agreement was first reached in September (see Fides 16/9/2008), however the MDC was opposed to the repartition of the ministers, which determined that the most important ones would be assigned to Mugabe's party. Tsvangirai's party wanted the seat of Internal Affairs Minister, as the ZANU-PF held that of Defense. After pressures from South Africa, Tsvangirai has accepted sharing the seat of Minister of Internal Affairs with Mugabe. According to the agreement, South Africa has asked the United States and the European Union to remove sanctions on the Mugabe regime, an appeal that has come from the African Union itself.
Over the course of the AU Summit, Libyan leader Muammar Ghedaffi was elected President of the AU, succeeding Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete. In the geographical order, the presidency of the Union was due to be filled by a North African nation. The term lasts one year. The Libyan leader has for some time now been trying to convince the other leaders of African nations to form a “United States of Africa,” a confederation of independent states, united by a common foreign and economic policy. (LM) (Agenzia Fides 2/2/2009)
