July 3, 2007
African leaders argued fiercely on
Monday over whether to rapidly create
a single state stretching from the
Cape to Cairo, with one small group
threatening to break away and forge
ahead with the project.
Delegates said the atmosphere in an
African Union (AU) summit was charged
as a group of states led by Libya's
Moammar Gadaffi and Senegal's
Abdoulaye Wade argued with a more
gradualist majority led by South
Africa's Thabo Mbeki.
"I think everybody is a little
bit tense, because they know how
serious this is," Senegalese
Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio
said.
"It is getting heated between
Gadaffi and the Southern
Africans," said one delegate, who
did not want to be identified.
While almost all the 53 member nations
agree with the goal of African
integration and eventual unity, most
of the summit leaders want this to be
a gradual process.
Gadio held out the prospect that a
small group of states committed to
creating a United States of Africa
could push forward without the others
and sign up to federation, ironically
splitting the AU over the idea of
unity.
"If Senegal wants to build this
union with two, three, four more
countries, there is not a country in
this room that has enough power to
tell Senegal you cannot do it,"
he said.
Kwamena Bartels, Information Minister
of host nation Ghana, attacked such a
strategy.
"It would be useful to all of us
that there is no such breakaway group.
Africa could do with a united
front," he said.
"Setting up breakaway groups is
not really the answer," Bartels
added, saying only Libya and Senegal
had so far openly backed an immediate
federal government.
These two, apparently backed by about
three or more states, want a unity
government as the only way to fight
poverty and other challenges facing
Africa, including globalisation.
Matters of survival
"Some of us think that Africa's
unity has become a matter of survival
... my president is here with his pen
ready to sign," Gadio told
reporters.
"Some will start and the others
will follow. ... Now, who is ready to
start? Senegal is ready."
Gadaffi, known for his impassioned
rhetoric, was more restrained on
Monday despite a speech on the
summit's eve invoking the spirit of
pan-African icon Kwame Nkrumah, who
led Ghana to independence 50 years
ago, to support his vision of a United
States of Africa.
Asked by a crush of journalists during
a summit recess whether he was
optimistic about unity, Gadaffi,
wearing dark glasses and a black cap,
declared: "I am always
optimistic."
The Libyan leader, describing himself
as a soldier for Africa, is impatient
with the slow pace of integration. He
did not attend the summit's opening
session on Sunday and believes the
decision over unity must be made by
Africa's masses and not leaders
closeted in a conference hall.
The summit leaders have come under
criticism for largely ignoring
pressing issues such as Sudan, Somalia
and Zimbabwe at this meeting to
concentrate on unifying the continent.
Many Africans regard this as an
unrealistic, if noble, dream. Sceptics
point to decades of wars, coups and
massacres that often sprang from
ethnic and religious fault lines on a
continent artificially carved up by
former colonial rulers.
The summit continued into the evening
on Monday and Bartels said the debate
was unlikely to be "crystallised"
until midday on Tuesday, the meeting's
final day.
|