Reuters Report

- Leaders agree on African union

- Gaddafi (right) has been the driving force behind the unity plan
- African leaders have agreed on the creation of an African union.

A declaration was made at the conclusion of a two-day extraordinary
meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) held in Sirte, Libya.

The meeting, hosted by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, was
called to discuss proposals to set up an African union similar to the
European Union.
South Africa is one of the crucial backers of the plan.

An African union will not, however, come into existence immediately as
not enough countries have formally ratified the treaty.

Institutions
Included in the union plan are a pan-African parliament, a court of
justice and a central bank.

In a declaration released on Friday afternoon the signatories "solemnly
declare the creation of an African union by unanimous agreement."

All 53 OAU member states have signed up to the declaration.
However, in order for the declaration to come into effect two-thirds of
OAU members, in other words 36 countries, need to ratify the agreement.

Still waiting
At the last count 31 countries, including South Africa and Nigeria, have
signed up.
When the thirty-sixth country ratifies the treaty there will be another
extraordinary meeting in Sirte.

The BBC correspondent in Sirte, Caroline Hawley, says that Friday's
declaration is a face saving formula for Colonel Gaddafi.
He was expecting that this meeting would see the formal declaration of
an African union.

Nevertheless, the summit itself, which drew more than 40 heads of state,
is still a triumph for Colonel Gaddafi, who is trying to promote himself
as Africa's elder statesman.

Tight security was maintained throughout , by a force of men called the
'Green Tigers', their t-shirts emblazoned with pictures of a snarling
tiger face.
The marbled hall where the gathering took place was hung with vast
portraits of the Libyan leader.

Whatever the future of the planned African Union, Colonel Gaddafi for
the moment is basking in the lime-light.
_______________________________
Panafrican News Agency report
Paul Ejime
Sirte, Tripoli

After two days of deliberations on the way forward for their
marginalised continent, African leaders took the bull by the horns in an
historic Sirte II Declaration of the African Union at the Libyan city
Friday.

"The Assembly of Heads of State and government proudly declares the
African Union by a unanimous decision," OAU Secretary General Salim
Ahmed Salim said at the end of the continental body's 5th Extra-ordinary
Summit.

The Declaration, which climaxed a journey of 17 months from Sirte I,
when the Union idea was unveiled in September 1999, could transform the
dream of the region and its people, especially Libyan leader Col.
Moammar Kadhafi, who could not hide his emotions after Salim had read
the four-point statement Friday.

Neither could the gathering at one of the many Halls of the ultra-modern
multi-million-dollar Ouagadougou Sirte Complex, which greeted the
Declaration with spontaneous cheers, to which the leader of the 1969
Libyan Revolution attired in a wine-colour African flowing gown (Boubou)
and cap to match, acknowledged with clenched fists and Black Power
salute.

In the Hall were hundreds of foreign journalists, who had come to record
history made. Video and still cameras rolled and clicked away, while
print journalists jotted down notes chronicling, arguably, Africa's
story of the new century.    One supporter chanted praises in Arabic, of
an elated Kadhafi, who was delighted at seeing his pet dream of a United
States of Africa almost realised.

Sanctioned by the West and largely misunderstood by many, for his
non-conformist principles based on a Socialist System eloquently
espoused in his famous Green Book, the Libyan leader has committed as
much to Pan-Africanism as to Pan-Arabism.

To ensure mass participation at the just-ended Sirte II meetings, he
paid off more than four million US dollars in contribution arrears, owed
by 10 member states to the OAU.    This was in addition to the lavish
hospitality showered on delegates to Libya-hosted meetings.

The high-spending meetings included the 65th OAU's Council of Ministers
session in 1997, the first of such meetings to be held outside the
continental Organisation's Addis Ababa headquarters.

Held at the heat of sanctions on Libya following political and
diplomatic tensions with the West, over the 1988 downing of the American
Pan Am flight 103 that killed 270 people off the Scottish city of
Lockerbie, the OAU Council meeting was taken to Tripoli to show African
solidarity with Kadhafi and his oil-rich country, with an estimated five
million people.

After hosting the 4th OAU Extra-ordinary Summit, or Sirte I, which
conceived the African Union in September 1999, Libya also hosted
preparatory meetings to Sirte II, by Ambassadors accredited to the OAU
and the Council of Ministers, 22-26 February in Tripoli.

The OAU did not disappoint Kadhafi at Sirte II either.

On the recommendation of former South African President Nelson Mandela,
who brokered an agreement under which Libya agreed to handover for
trial, two of its nationals suspected of involvement in the Lockerbie
bombing, the Summit issued a strong statement condemning the non-lift of
the UN 1992 sanctions on the North African country.

In his speech to the Summit, Mandela revealed that it had been agreed
that after the trial, the sanctions involving sea, air and land embargo
would be lifted.

One of the Libyans was sentenced to life jail, while the other was
acquitted, but Libya has denounced the trial and rejected the suggestion
by London and Washington, that Tripoli take responsibility and pay huge
compensations to the bombed flight 103 victims.

The Libyan leader hailed the Sirte II Declaration, which is to be given
greater vent at the OAU's July 2001, 37th Summit in Lusaka, Zambia, as
the "beginning of a new balance of power," in a uni-polar world, where
the US, Tripoli's arch-enemy holds sway.

But Kadhafi is not alone in his near obsession and relentless campaign
for greater unity in Africa, which continues to embrace and warm up to
him, even when the West intensifies efforts to ostracise or encourage
others to shun him.

OAU chairman and Togolese President Gnassingbe Eyadema, one of the
longest serving African leaders, described Sirte II Declaration as
"victory and an ambitious step towards the African Union."

President Abdiqasim Salad Hassan of Somalia, whose country returned to
the OAU after a 10-year civil war-induced absence, spoke in the same
view in an interview with PANA.
He said African should move towards greater unity and integration.

For his part, President Frederick Chiluba welcomed African leaders to
Lusaka in July to consummate the Union, which becomes operational 30
days after 36 or two-thirds of OAU members have ratified the
Constitutive Act.

Thirty-two countries ratified the Act at Sirte II, while 53 countries
signed up, remaining Morocco, which has suspended its membership of the
OAU over Western Sahara territorial dispute.

Rushing the Union into force without the mandatory ratification would
have amounted to an unconstitutional act, hence the compromise on the
Sirte II Declaration.

Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir told PANA, it was important to insist
on rules in order to give confidence and legality to the institutions of
the Union.

The big question now is, after the Sirte II Declaration, what next for
Africa and its more than 600 million people?

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