Summit: Kibaki in the spotlight

2008-01-31 10:22

Addis Ababa - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki strode into the African Union summit on Thursday, confidently taking his place among the continent's leaders despite challenges that he didn't rightly win the presidency and as deadly violence continued in his home country.

More than 40 heads of state were expected to attend the three-day meeting in the Ethiopian capital, but it was Kibaki's arrival that was most anticipated.

Kibaki's political opponent Raila Odinga, who said he won Kenya's December 27 election, was not invited to the summit, his supporters said.

The theme of this year's summit was industrialisation, but the crisis in Kenya was overriding. Since the disputed vote, more than 800 people had died, and tens of thousands had fled their homes.

AU-UN to send troops to Darfur

In preparatory meetings, African Union chairperson Alpha Konare chided the 53-member union for not doing enough to address issues in Africa and around the world.

"Today it is the responsibility of the AU to solve this problem," he said of the violence in Kenya.

The leaders - including Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Libya's Muammar Gadaffi and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni - arrived in convoys of town cars and sport utility vehicles and walked in amid relative silence.

Absent were the traditional drummers and dancers that had welcomed presidents to many prior African summits.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was in attendance to make a repeat of last year's summit talks with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir about the state of a joint AU-UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur, slated to become the world's largest peacekeeping force.

The AU and UN had pledged to send a 26 000-strong peacekeeping force to Darfur, replacing an undermanned, under-equipped AU force.

Deployment faces many barriers

Deployment of the so-called hybrid force had been delayed because the Sudanese government had not agreed to accept non-African troops, and the UN had not been able to get governments to supply helicopters, which it said were essential for the mission to succeed.

Jendayi Frazer, the top United States diplomat for Africa, said there was "significant evidence" that the Sudanese government was to blame for many of the delays.

"We hear from the UN that there have been many barriers placed on the deployment ... from issuing visas, to providing land for the troops and many other types of bureaucratic, 'go-slow' actions," said Frazer, who was in Addis for the summit. She said a similar deployment in Rwanda had gone much more smoothly.

Peacekeeping operations in Somalia were also on the minds of the African leaders. AU officials said getting troops to enhance the small Ugandan and Burundian contingents was a priority, as it was during last year's summit in Accra, Ghana.

"Our intention is to take advantage of the presence of African leaders in Addis Ababa to hit quotas," said AU Peace and Security Council Commissioner Said Djinnit.

- AP