Gaborone, 08 July-(ANA)-Botswana has declared the just-ended African Union Summit a failure and slammed Libyan President, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi for lack of respect for established procedures and use of coercion to conduct the affairs of the AU.
"The Summit failed the people of Africa by not dealing with issues that are of immediate concern to their livelihoods such as what may be done to advance investments in agriculture to promote food security," Botswana vice-president Lt-Gen Mompati Merafhe said.
Lt-Gen Merafhe who attended the Summit on behalf of President Ian Khama saidthat Libya was an excellent host for the summit in Sirte but the same cannot be said about the way the business of the summit was handled.
He said Libyan Leader Gaddafi who is chair of the African Union, “has no respect for established procedures and processes of the African Union” adding that “this may be motivated by his burning desire to coerce everyone into the premature establishment of an African Union Government."
He said that Libya through Gaddafi bulldozed the summit to pass its proposals without debate. "The two proposals by Libya for the establishment of the African Defence Council and the establishment of the African Agency for the Protection of Territorial and Economic Waters of African countries were adopted by the Summit with no debate allowed by the chair," he explained.
"In our view, this was a rushed decision because the financial and other resource implications for establishing these bodies were not properly examined.
The questions of whether the creation of the Defence Council in particular, will be of benefit to the entire continent or to a specific region as well as its relationship to the existing AU Peace and Security Council were also not examined," Merafhe added. (ANA)