Posted by From Oghogho Obayuwana, Libya on
AFRICA Union (AU's) Core Group of Three and the Committee of 10 charged with the consideration of Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa and Libya's bid for the two coveted United Nations (UN) Security Council seats to be awarded Africa in a restructured UN swung into action yesterday in Sirte, Libya.
AFRICA Union (AU's) Core Group of Three and the Committee of 10 charged with the consideration of Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa and Libya's bid for the two coveted United Nations (UN) Security Council seats to be awarded Africa in a restructured UN swung into action yesterday in Sirte, Libya. The body will make its final assessment, preparatory to today's meeting of the seventh ordinary session of the AU Executive Council, the body that will first appraise its report. The Core Group and the team of 10 operate as one body.
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The AU secretariat now operating from Libya also yesterday announced the sanctioning of Niger and Eritrea. The two countries were found to be defaulting in the payment of their dues to the regional group. They will join Guinea-Bissau, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Liberia, Sao Tome and Principe, Somalia and Seychelles as nations with red accounts with the AU. What this means in the continental body's standing rules is that the affected countries cannot participate in AU's deliberations. Their delegations to the Libyan summit are there as observers.
But a number of the countries - Niger, Sao Tome and Principe, Liberia and Guinea-Bissau belong to the Coalition of Friends (allies of Nigeria), which the Federal Government had built up to shore support for the nation's quest for the UN seat. The AU maintained yesterday that the "sanctions would continue until the countries pay up failing which other penalties might become of appropriate."
Nigeria alongside Algeria, Egypt and South Africa is the only country currently meeting the sealing of the AU finance assessment scale put at 8.25 per cent of contributions.
The special panel (Core Group and the 10 wise leaders - two representatives from each of Africa's five regions) was set up to monitor and consider developments on the forthcoming UN reforms. The consensus was reached in Ezulwuni (Swaziland), on February 22, 2005 by the G-15 Ministerial Committee and adopted by the AU Executive Council on March 8, 2005 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It also acts as the AU's Follow-up Mechanism comprising Nigeria, Ghana and the chairperson of the AU Commission Alfa Oumar Konare. All the stakeholders including the Chairman of the Executive Council and Foreign Affairs Minister, Ambassador Olu Adeniji, attended yesterday's all-important meeting
The committee had also re-affirmed the Ezulwini consensus and reiterated its mandate, namely making Africa's views known to other regions, and engaging all stakeholders for reciprocal support and promoting wide acceptance of the continent's common position.
The Guardian learnt that the Core Group was mandated to contact the capitals of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, not only to ascertain their views but also to canvass support for the African common position.
Thus, the Foreign Minister of Ghana visited Washington, London and Paris while Adeniji toured Moscow and proceeded to Rome to meet China's Foreign Minister of China.
The report presented by them states that three permanent members of the UN are backing the African course.
It reads: "United Kingdom, France and Russia were generally sympathetic to and expressed support for the African common position on a comprehensive reform of the UN, especially on the expansion of the Security Council and the regional representations...The three countries stressed, however, that Africa must complete the process of regional selection of its two representatives for its permanent seats and added that they stood ready to lend their support to the continent."
The United States (U.S.), according to the report, agreed largely with proposals for institutional reforms as contained in the report of the UN Secretary-General albeit with some reservations. "It indicated its preference for only one or two new permanent seats which will include Japan and perhaps one other into the expanded Security Council. The USA does not, therefore, appear to presently support representation from any other regions in the expanded Security Council. Even for the non-permanent category, the USA wants only two or three additions."
China, the report went further, "agreed that Africa should play an increased role in the Security Council but that more African countries should be given opportunities to serve on the Council on rotational basis."
Commenting on the work done so far by the Nigerian team, the chair of AU Permanent Representatives Committee, Ambassador Olusegun Adesanya, confirmed that spoilers within the African rank now abound ostensibly to pull the sail off Nigeria's feet quest. He said that the Coffee Club (a group in the UN led by Italy and Pakistan had been active in making very good use of a North African country to spoil things for otherwise surefooted countries.
"There has been a number of in-house cleaning issues here. Here is a country (Nigeria) that has contributed immensely to the sustenance of African stability and development and we have been at the front burner of the AU transformation. Yes, we are surefooted," he said.
The criteria being discussed yesterday for worthy African representatives at the UN Security Council include that an aspiring country must: