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Post-mortem on the AU Summit
The 11th Session of the African Union Assembly, held at Sharm el Sheik from 30 June to 1 July, can be considered to have been largely successful. Both the Assembly of Heads of State and Government and the Peace and Security Council gave their support to the Somali peace process and to the agreement signed in Djibouti on June 9 by the TFG and the opposition ARS. Both bodies strongly condemned attacks, threats and acts of violence against AMISOM. Both the Peace and Security Council and the Assembly condemned Eritrean aggression against Djibouti, calling on both parties to use all peaceful means to resolve their differences. Eritrea, although invited, failed to turn up to the relevant Peace and Security Council meeting. In a letter to the Council a few days earlier, the Eritrean Foreign Ministry said it had serious reservations about the Council’s modalities of operation and its standards. These apparently related to the Council’s failure to deal with what Eritrea claimed were Ethiopian violations of the Constitutive Act of the African Union. Until these were addressed Eritrea felt unable to respond to the Council.

On Union Government, the Assembly accepted the proposals of the Committee of Twelve Heads of State and Government on Union Government as a sound basis for moving the integration process forward. It was the consensus of the Summit that the next session of the Assembly in Addis Ababa should bring finality to this interminable debate. Prime Minister Meles, a member of the Committee of Twelve, underlined the need to stop going round and round in a circle on the issue. There were two options, he said. One was to accept the views of the majority as provided in the Constitutive Act of the African Union. This, he said, would prevent the abomination of another grand debate. Alternatively, as member states were sovereign, they could chart their own course, even if they were in a minority. Variable geometry would imply that everyone could move forward at the pace they were able to do so. So, he added, those that want could go ahead and show the way to do it faster. This would break the log-jam of seven years. Seven summits and one special summit had not provided a solution. The grand debate in Accra did not solve the issue. One more extra-ordinary summit would not solve it either. “Save us from another summit of abomination,” he said. “We need to solve this issue here and now, without disturbing our common endeavor.”

On the venue of Summits, the Assembly agreed to continue to hold the January Summits at AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa. The July Summits will also continue to be held either at the headquarters or in any member state which invites the Assembly. Libya’s suggestion to move the July Summits permanently to Sirte was rejected. On Zimbabwe, Prime Minister Meles said that everyone was saddened by how things had turned out. The election monitors of SADC and the AU said that the elections did not reflect the unfettered views of the people of Zimbabwe. Disenchantment, Prime Minister Meles said, was a fact that needed to be addressed. The status quo was untenable and unsustainable. It required real solutions with both sides listening to each other. It was only then, the Prime Minister emphasized that Zimbabwe could again move forward.