OAU Launches Bold New Plan for African Unity Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit DIRECT FROM CUBA Special Moncada Edition - July 26, 2001 . *OAU Summit: A Way to African Unity by Luis Manuel Saez Luanda, July 26 (PL)--The 37th Organization of African Unity (OAU) Summit, concluded in Lusaka, Zambia this week, made headway toward the African Union (AU) and it emerged with a guiding plan for continental unity. After three days of deliberations, some 40 regional leaders adopted the project "African Initiative", which will rule the destinu of this long-suffering continent and provide a boost in overcoming the obstacles to development caused by the legacy of colonialism. The meeting was the latest of the Pan-African organization founded in May, 1963 when independence movements in Africa rose up against European colonialism, discrimination and exploitation. To undertake the huge task, the OAU appointed as general secretary, Amara Essy, from the Ivory Coast. A diplomat with wide experience, Essy has worked at in Ivory Coast Foreign Affairs Ministry and as an ambassador to the United Nations. The new general secretary will replace Salim Ahmed Salim, who was has led the OAU during for the last 12 years. Essay was elected over two other candidates, Namibian Theo Ben-Gurirab and Guinea's Lansana Kouyat and won with 42 votes of the 48 voting countries. He has one year to make preparations for a sweeping new African organizational structure, which will include an executive committee, a Parliament, a continental court, a bank and a single currency. The OAU's Unity Plan has been encouraged by Libyan leader Muamar el Kadhaffi, and envisions a continental organization similar to the Europen Union which the OAU hopes can eliminate conflicts, misery and diseases and aid in development, topics discussed at the recent meeting. At present, there are still at least a dozen wars raging in Africa over territorial, ethnic and political conflicts. Among the most lethal are wars in Sierra Leone, Burundi, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Angola. Angola's President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos did not attend the summit, although the peace process provisions of the Lusaka Protocol were agreed to and signed by parties to the conflict in 1994. The text, among other things, calls for complete disarmament and the immediate end of attacks and terrorist actions by Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). The text of the Protocol also calls for and end to hostilities in the Popular Republic of Congo (PDC) which, it notes, depends on the evacuation of foreign troops, beginning with those from Rwanda and Uganda, where they have been supporting rebel movements against the Kinshasa government. In support of the DRC government, troops from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe are present at the request of the Congo government One of the main challenges of the new organization is to save One of the major challenges facing the new organization is to end these conflicts, which undermine African efforts to solve the problems of poverty, disease, and the lack of social-economic development. In ths regard, Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who will serve as OAU president until next year, "we made important decisions in this summit. Our challenge is to implement them, and we must do so rapidly." On the other hand, UN general secretary Kofi Annan, who attended the meeting, cautioned that "African leaders must have value this process sufficiently to meet this challenge, which is nothing less than the reconstruction of the continent." Mozambican Joaquim Chissano predicted that the African Unity project can succeed, if it is understood internationally and if all cooperate with the initiative, instead of "attempting to torpedo it for extra-continental interests," This task of African Unity is indeed titanic. Africa has some 800 million inhabitants, but more than half of the African people live on less that than one dollar a day. The continent has the largest number of AIDS patients, 25 million people, in the entire world. In some regions, the epidemic has caused outstanding a phenomenal decreases in the average life expectancy. In Botswana, for example, the average life expectacy of 53 years decreased to 44 years in 2000. Africa also has the lowest rate of human development, with 29 of its 36 countries among those with the most precarious living situation on the planet. At the OAU Summit where the African Unity was launched, the task is to reconstruct Africa economically and to bring the project's proposals to reality in order to save the continent from a gradual disappearnce. In its 38 years of existence, the OAU has made efforts to create prosperity and prevent war, but neocolonialism, and its consequent corruption and incompetence, still exist. The continent's leaders analyzing the OAU's experience admit that they face a daunting task, and that they have only just begun. The OAU's next meeting is set for 2002 in South Africa. (c) 2001 Prensa Latina, NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-07.26.01-20:57:55-4578