African leaders brought together the presidents of feuding neighbors Sudan and South Sudan on Saturday and fleshed out a plan for military intervention in northern Mali where they said al-Qaeda-linked rebels threatened the continent’s security.
After attending a summit of the African Union’s (AU) Peace and Security Council in Addis Ababa, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudanese President Salva Kiir met for face-to-face talks at a hotel in the Ethiopian capital.
It was the first encounter since their countries came close to war in April and it raised hopes for a negotiated settlement of oil and border disputes before an Aug. 2 UN Security Council deadline.
Photo: AFP
African peers had hailed their presence at the earlier gathering and their pledges to pursue negotiations and not conflict, as an -encouraging sign that the two former civil war foes could settle their disputes over border demarcation and sharing of oil revenues.
“Their statements persuaded us that there is good will,” Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara, who chairs the AU Council, told reporters after the closed-door session.
Landlocked South Sudan shut down oil production in January over a dispute with Khartoum about revenue sharing and fees for a pipeline through Sudan — the South’s only outlet for its oil exports.
The two countries’ armies clashed in April over the disputed border oil area of Heglig.
The African heads of state met at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to discuss ways to resolve messy aftermaths of military coups this year in Mali and Guinea-Bissau, which have put blots on the continent’s democratic credentials after advances in stability and governance in recent years.
In addition to backing reconciliation between the Sudans, they also threw their weight behind regional efforts to end a military rebellion in east Democratic Republic of Congo that has strained ties between Kinshasa and its Great Lakes neighbor Rwanda.
Focusing on Mali, where al-Qaeda-linked local and foreign jihadists have seized control of the largely desert north after hijacking a rebellion by secular Tuareg separatists, the leaders said Africa would “spare no effort” to reunite the country.
They laid out a political and military strategy that aims to secure a full return of power to a civilian government in Mali’s south following a March 22 coup, and also foresees an internationally backed security force whose mission will be to take back the north if the rebels there do not withdraw.
The AU Council “reiterates its call to all member states and all the international community for them to provide the necessary technical, logistical and financial support,” the continental body’s top security and peace official, Ramtane Lamamra, said in a statement to reporters.
African leaders are seeking UN Security Council support for military intervention in Mali to end the rebellion in the north and reunite the Sahel state. The Security Council has endorsed West African efforts to end the unrest, but has stopped short of backing a military operation until African leaders can clearly spell out its objectives.
“For the moment, nothing is ready,” a European diplomat who follows the region closely said.
Ouattara said AU military experts were in Bamako discussing a military intervention strategy with the Malian armed forces.
“This work is in progress,” he said.
Earlier, the Ivorian president condemned what he called “the intention of terrorist groups to create a sanctuary in northern Mali.”
Denouncing alleged links between al-Qaeda in the Sahel region and other violent Islamist groups, such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and al-Shabaab in Somalia, Ouattara said this posed “a serious threat to regional security.”
Ouattara repeated the AU position that there would be no negotiations with “terrorist groups” in northern Mali.
One factor distracting the African heads of state from the continent’s serious security and development challenges is a bruising contest over who should head the AU Commission, which steers the regional diplomatic body.
The standoff, which has broadly split Africa’s French and English-speaking blocs into two camps, pits South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma against incumbent Jean Ping from Gabon, and risks dominating the weekend summit.
The AU leadership race has been deadlocked since a January summit vote ended in stalemate between the candidacies.
With Ping carrying the broad support of Africa’s French--speaking states, and English-speaking states in southern Africa lining up behind Pretoria’s candidate, the continental body risks a division that could affect its global credibility and -crisis-handling capacity if it persists, diplomats said.
As the debate over the leadership contest swirled in the corridors of the AU’s soaring Chinese-built steel and glass headquarters, rumors of compromise candidates to break the deadlock abounded.
Ugandan Minister of Foreign Affairs Henry Okello said he was confident that the AU meeting could finally choose a new commission head, but he stressed “it should be a person that does not polarize.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was