SIRTE, Libya, 29 February 2004 — Presidents and top officials from African Union (AU) countries yesterday formally ended a two-day summit in Libya agreeing to work together to tackle the crucial issues of water and agriculture and politely dismissing their host’s idea of a creating single African army.
Libyan leader Moamer Qaddafi’s idea would involve replacing all existing government forces across the continent. The summiteers pledged only to study this plan, along with others on a continental non-aggression pact.
The closing ceremony of the summit was delayed by several hours because Qaddafi raised his single-army idea at the last minute, according to several delegates.
“Any national (African) army should be put in a museum,” the Libyan leader said during the closing ceremony. “A day will come when there are no national African armies,” he said.
But this is unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.
“It’s never going to work. Nobody supports it,” said one west African delegate in Sirte, the Libyan coastal town where the summit took place.
Instead, the AU is set to move forward with well developed plans for establishing a standby force responsible for peacekeeping, humanitarian activities and, in rare circumstances, military intervention in a member state, if necessary without an invitation.
Speaking at the summit’s opening ceremony on Friday, Romano Prodi, president of the European Union’s executive, the European Commission, said the EU was prepared to help fund such a force to the tune of 250 million euros ($311 million).
The principle of common defense -- that an attack on one state should be considered an attack on the entire continent and that all African countries should work together to prevent and resolve conflicts — is enshrined in the founding charter of the AU. The new AU policy expands the traditional definition of defense and security to include not just states but citizens and their economic, nutritional and health-related well-being.
A “solemn declaration” supporting this policy was adopted at the summit.
The only concrete decision taken during the talks was to set up an African water facility, a financial institution geared to addressing the continent’s dire water problems.
This project was contained in a document called the Sirte Declaration on the Challenges of Sustainable Development of Agriculture and Water Resources in Africa, which the heads of state also adopted. Only about half the continent’s 800 million inhabitants have easy access to safe drinking water.
And agriculture, which is the livelihood of the vast majority of Africans, is overly dependent on unreliable rainfall, as opposed to irrigation.
Addressing the closing ceremony, Qddafi suggested his decision late last year to abandon all weapons of mass destruction was motivated by self-preservation. “Any national state that adopts this policy (of weapons of mass destruction) cannot protect itself, instead it would expose itself to danger,” he said. It was the first time that Kadhafi had spoken of his December decision in such a public international gathering.
