Culled from the NY Times

By NORIMITSU ONISHI The New York Times

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, July 11 Nearly four decades after Africa's newly
independent nations created the Organization of African Unity in an effort
to give a strong voice to the world's poorest lands, the continent's
current leaders began burying that body today and creating a new one that
they pledged would redeem the failures of its predecessor.

On the final day of the Organization of African Unity's last summit
meeting, held this year in Lusaka, Zambia, its members endorsed a plan to
retire the O.A.U. in the next year and to transform it into the African
Union, which they hope to model after the European version.

But skeptics across Africa point out that the new or
ganization will face
the same fundamental problems that hobbled its predecessor. They also say
that the new bloc is too closely tied to its biggest champion, Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi of Libya, who has used the proposal for the African Union to
increase his influence in sub-Saharan Africa.

Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, a Ghanaian, also
sounded a cautious note in a speech this week at the summit meeting.

"This historic effort," he said, "will require leadership, courage and a
willingness to depart from the ways of the past, if it is to do for Africa
what the European Union has done for Europe."

Supporters of the new bloc say that while the membership will remain the
same, the African Union will have a stronger charter than the O.A.U.,
giving it the broad powers they think it will need to press toward real
political and economic integration among Africa's 53 countries.

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