Does this look like a small bump in the road towards One World Government? Sure looks like it

Reality bites for United States of Africa dream after summit

ACCRA (AFP): The drive towards forging a United States of Africa was running out of steam Wednesday as leaders filed away from a summit without agreeing on a timeline for creating a new government for the continent.

The three-day summit in Ghana, which wrapped up shortly before midnight on Tuesday, was devoted to a grand debate on a union government with burning issues such as Darfur and Somalia barely getting a look in.

But when host President John Kufuor delivered a closing declaration, it was clear that leaders who favour a gradual approach towards integration had stymied the fast-track ambitions of Libya's Moamer Kadhafi and Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade.

In the absence of any timetable, Kufuor announced an audit of the current executive body, the African Union commission, and the commissioning of four studies on the prospects of a new government.

"Africa shall evolve," he told journalists. "It's not a revolution we are invoking so we cannot give you a timeline."

One of the studies will focus on "the contents of the union government concept and its relations with national governments" while another will examine its "domains of competence and impact ... on sovereignty".

The others will concentrate on the "elaboration of a road map and timeframe for establishing the union government" and how such a project would be funded.

The scope of the topics under review illustrate the lack of consensus among leaders of the world's poorest continent on how they want to move forward.

While many paid lip service to the idea of an alternative USA, few went along with Kadhafi's blueprint for the creation of a 15-member cabinet -- including defence, foreign and trade ministers -- by 2008.

For all the talk of unity, analysts believe differences among the 53 nations are too vast to accommodate a centralised executive which could speak with one voice.

"The United States of Africa has immense emotional appeal but as a political programme it does not have an enormous amount of traction," said Terence Corrigan of the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg.

"Among countries like South Africa there's a realisation, which they are reluctant to express too loudly, that you have a big gulf in terms of economic development and political cultures which militates against the rush towards a union government.

"You also have the competing tradition within Africa that the notion of sovereignty is a very powerful one."

Indeed, in an echo of the arguments within the European Union, many heads of state expressed fears about sovereignty.

In an address to the summit on Tuesday, EU commission president Jose Manuel Barroso said Europe's experience was political integration came after and not before economic integration.

Kadhafi arrived in Accra after stopovers in some of Africa's most impoverished countries such as Guinea and Sierra Leone, calling for "the voice of the people to be heard.

The shortcomings of the AU, established five years ago in Durban, have been exposed by its failure to persuade anyone bar Uganda to send peacekeepers to Somalia and the inability of a poorly-equipped force to stem the bloodshed in Sudan's western Darfur region.

Many leaders, including Mbeki who hosted the Durban summit, believe the AU needs nurturing rather than a complete overhaul.

Much of its troubles have stemmed from a lack of finance. An eve of summit meeting of foreign ministers was handed a report which showed only seven states were up-to-date with their dues.

Ludeki Chweya, a lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said many leaders want to give the AU more time to prove its worth.

"I think there's scepticism among some leaders because the matter has come up too suddenly," he said. "It seems to me that it was a bit rushed."

Original article posted here.

Deja Vu all over again: Once again breaking everything we touch

Bodies dragged, burned as Mogadishu battles rage

MOGADISHU, Somalia (Reuters) -- Somali insurgents dragged soldiers' bodies through the streets of Mogadishu before burning them on Wednesday in heavy fighting that killed at least 13 people and injured scores more, witnesses said.

The corpses of five soldiers -- either from the Somali government army or their Ethiopian allies -- were desecrated during some of the worst clashes in the lawless capital since the interim government took over in December, witnesses said.

In one place, men dragged two semi-naked corpses by the feet while members of a crowd chanting "God is Great" kicked and pelted them with stones, a Reuters reporter said.
Scene similar to aftermath of Black Hawk downing

In another, three bodies were hauled round by rope, kicked and then also set alight, witnesses said.

The grisly scenes recalled the aftermath of the 1993 shooting-down of a Black Hawk helicopter by Somali militiamen during a failed U.S. operation to hunt down warlords.

Images of dead American troops being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu were the beginning of the end for a U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force which quit Somalia in 1995.

As well as the five soldiers, witnesses and medical sources said at least eight civilians died in Wednesday's clashes.

The fighting, which wounded at least 65 people according to hospital staff, began early in the day when insurgents fired at Ethiopian and government forces in tanks and was still raging in the afternoon, residents said.
'I saw an old man die in front of me'

"I have never seen or experienced the kind of fighting that I saw today. People were running in all directions. I saw an old man die in front of me," said Faduma Elmi, 80.

After being attacked, the tanks responded with four cannon shots, they said. The Ethiopians also fired rockets at Mogadishu stadium where residents said some insurgents had dug in.

The interim government took over Mogadishu in late December during a brief war in which it and Ethiopia routed a militant Islamist group that ruled most of south Somalia since mid-2006.

Many believe the defeated Islamists, along with disgruntled clan and warlord militiamen, are behind regular hit-and-run attacks. In most cases, the attacks prompt retaliatory fire and civilians are often the victims of the crossfire.
African Union forces seen as invaders

The fighting initially broke out near a government base in the former defense ministry. Insurgents have repeatedly struck at government and Ethiopian soldiers based there.

This government is the 14th attempt at establishing central rule since warlords ended it by toppling dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, ushering in an era of anarchy and violence.

African Union peacekeepers from Uganda are trying to help the government gain control of the anarchic Horn of Africa nation. Like the Ethiopians, they are viewed as foreign invaders by many Somalis and are therefore also targeted.

Paddy Ankunda, AU mission spokesman, said the Ugandan soldiers were not involved in Wednesday's fighting. "It has not affected the three areas we are in," he said, referring to Mogadishu's airport, seaport and presidential palace.

Ethiopia denied its soldiers were among the five dragged through the streets. "That is categorically false," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ambassador Solomon Abede.

Original article posted here.

African Patsies and Psy Ops Fantasies (Pssst: Al CIAda is not what they tell you)

U.S. hunted al Qaeda suspects from Ethiopia: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military used bases inside Ethiopia last month in a quiet campaign to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders in the Horn of Africa, The New York Times reported on its Web site on Thursday, citing U.S. officials.

The Times said the campaign included the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to conduct air strikes against Islamic militants in neighboring Somalia.

Officials were quoted as saying the clandestine relationship with Ethiopia also included significant information-sharing on the militants' positions and information from U.S. spy satellites with the Ethiopian military, the newspaper reported.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to discuss details of the operation with the Times, but the paper said some officials agreed to provide specifics because they considered it an relative success story. They said the campaign disrupted terrorist networks in Somalia and led to the death or capture of several Islamic militants.

The mission was in support of Ethiopian troops' recent drive to enter Somalia to help the government oust the militant Islamist movement.

According to the Times, Washington resisted an official endorsement of the Ethiopian invasion, but U.S. officials from several agencies said the Bush administration decided last year an incursion was the best way to remove the Islamists from power.

The dead and captured does not yet include some al Qaeda leaders such as Fazul Abdullah Mohammed and Fahid Mohammed Ally Msalam, whom the United States has hunted for their suspected roles in the attacks on the Kenya and Tanzania embassies in 1998.

The sharing of battlefield intelligence on the Islamists' positions was a result of an Ethiopian request to Gen. John Abizaid, then the commander of the U.S. Central Command. John Negroponte, then the director of national intelligence, also authorized spy satellites to be diverted to provide information to Ethiopia, officials told the Times.

The secret operation in the Horn of Africa is an example of a more aggressive approach the Pentagon has taken to send Special Operations troops to hunt high-level terrorism suspects. President George W. Bush gave the Pentagon powers after the September 11 attacks to carry out such missions, the report said.

The newspaper said that Ethiopian troops have received U.S. training for counterterrorism operations for several years in camps near the Somalia border.

Original article posted here.