[ 2012-07-15 ]

African leaders meet on AU top job, hotspots
ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - African Union leaders meeting
Sunday will tackle the continent's hotspots at
their biannual summit, even if elections for the
bloc's top job are likely to overshadow the agenda
after a deadlocked vote in January.

South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will
challenge the sitting chairman of the commission,
Jean Ping, after neither won the required
two-thirds of the vote at the last summit, leaving
Ping in the job for a further six months.

They will face off again on Sunday for the top
job, which Ping has held since 2008.

Both candidates have issued strongly-worded public
statements ahead of Sunday's vote.

Earlier this week, Ping dismissed reports from
South African media that he was pulling out of the
race to allow Dlamini-Zuma to stand unopposed,
prompting the Southern African Development
Community to accuse him of abusing AU resources in
his election race.

Analysts say unwritten tradition is that
continental powerhouses do not run for the post of
AU Commission chairman -- leaving smaller nations
to take the job -- and that South Africa's
decision to override this rule has sparked bad
feeling.

If no chair is selected this time around, Ping
could legally be asked to stay on as leader until
the next summit in January 2013.

Security issues are also a top priority at the
gathering, with leaders focusing on instability in
Mali, renewed violence in the Democratic Republic
of Congo and the ongoing crisis between Sudan and
South Sudan.

Following a Peace and Security Council meeting
Saturday, the AU demanded an end to "unacceptable
interference" by Mali's ex-junta following a
destabilizing coup in March and called for the
former junta's dissolution.

The security arm of the pan-African bloc also
called a meeting at heads of state level for
regional powers seeking a solution to escalating
violence in eastern DR Congo.

The council urged a speedy solution to outstanding
conflicts between the Sudans at the end of the
security meeting, which was attended by Sudan's
President Omar al-Bashir and his southern
countrpart Salva Kiir.

The conference is officially themed "boosting
intra-Africa trade", the same as for the bloc's
January summit.

Officials said they had decided to limit
themselves to one theme per year rather than a new
one each summit, as was previously the case.

The meeting is being held in the Ethiopian capital
after Malawi's new president Joyce Banda refused
to host Bashir, wanted by the International
Criminal Court on war crimes and genocide charges.

Source - AFP

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