First day for fledgling African unity ends in discord

AFRICA'S new African Union (AU), tasked with ending wars and poverty, spent its first working day on Wednesday with its most powerful nations in disarray over when it would next meet.

The confusion was sown by maverick Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi jockeying for greater influence as he pushed a widely ridiculed proposal to create a single African country and called a special summit to debate it, delegates said.

The mix-up appeared to be resolved at least temporarily by the end of the two-day African summit with new AU chairman President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa overruling oil exporting powerhouse Nigeria - though delegates said this did not signal fundamental discord between Africa’s two strongest nations.

About 40 presidents and monarchs were in Durban to launch the AU, which has explicit pledges to improve human rights and fight corruption, with Mbeki as chairman for its first year.

A senior Western diplomat called Libya’s use of influence at the summit regrettable, but said it would not deter major powers from supporting the 53-nation AU, which replaced the long ineffectual Organisation of African Unity on Tuesday.

Analysts said to turn the AU’s aims into reality, some long-serving leaders would have to change the habits of a lifetime, something they failed to do under the OAU.

They pointed to the absence from Tuesday’s speeches of any substantive discussion of the AIDS pandemic ravaging the continent, the food crisis gripping southern Africa or the political tension in Zimbabwe.

“Politically the leaders want to be seen as part of this new era,” said the Ugandan commentator Robert Kabushenga.

“But they also want to leave themselves a lot of leeway to go back home and go on doing what they want to their people and their neighbours.”