Leaders from Africa and Europe headed into tough talks to seal a “new, equal” partnership between the two continents yesterday after narrowly averting a last-minute diplomatic rumpus over Sudan.
Hosted in the high-rise seaside Libyan capital by leader Muammar Qaddafi, Sudan is boycotting the two-day Africa-EU summit in retaliation for the exclusion of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who faces an international arrest warrant.
The eve-of-summit boycott, which Bashir blames on the Europeans, comes as the two continents face off on fractious issues such as trade and immigration, while striving to put the burden of history behind in a new partnership of equals, but concerns that a leader wanted by the International Criminal Court would join the gathering of 80 nations, only the third in two decades, had worried some nations, diplomatic sources from both continents said.
Notable summit absentees include the EU’s “big three” — British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — though the Sudanese issue was never publicly cited.
The Sudanese pull-out on Sunday came 24 hours after former South African president Thabo Mbeki reported Bashir was indeed headed for the oil-rich desert nation’s palm-fringed capital.
“Mr Bashir will not attend,” Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Ahmad Karti retorted.
The no-show was “to avoid embarrassment to Libya” and was taken “under pressure from Europe,” he said.
Bashir was indicted in March last year for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, and in July on charges of genocide, linked to atrocities committed by Khartoum’s forces in Darfur.
In a statement, he accused Europeans of “hypocrisy” for urging him to implement Sudan’s 2005 north-south peace accord, while attacking his legitimacy.
Europe’s stand was “an attack on the African Union and Sudan, while also undermining the idea of real dialogue and cooperation between Africa and Europe,” the Sudanese leader said on Sunday.
At the last Africa-EU summit three years ago in Lisbon, leaders representing more than 1.5 billion people pledged to turn a page on the old-era donor-recipient relationship and instead propel ties to “a new, equal and strategic level.”
In Tripoli, where a massive police presence cordoned off the heart of the city on the eve of the summit, a draft of this year’s joint declaration states that the two continents are “determined to seize together new opportunities for broader and mutually beneficial initiatives.”
Africa’s leading aid donor, the 27-nation EU, remains its top trading partner, but risks being elbowed aside as Brazil, India and other emerging giants join China in chasing the spoils of the resource-rich continent.
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