African Diplomacy Observer

The US Special Envoy for Sudan, Andrew Natsios, began on September 26, 2007 a ten-day visit to Sudan, where he hopes to help peace efforts both in Southern Sudan and the war-torn Western region of Darfur. He is scheduled to meet with Sudanese officials on Thursday to discuss the situation in Darfur and to travel to that region later this week. He is also expected to travel to Southern Sudan where a 2005 peace agreement is said to be in jeopardy. According to some US diplomats, Natsios will also help negotiate border demarcation between North and South and particularly the statute of the oil-producing central Abiye region.

Andrew Natsios was appointed by Georges Bush on September 19, 2006, while addressing the UN General Assembly, as his Special Envoy for Sudan. He is a Professor on the Practice of Diplomacy and Advisor of International Development at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.

Source: VOA News

The fourteen members States from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) met in Dar-Es-Salam (Tanzania) on 28 and 29 March 2007, within the framework of the SADC Double Troika and SADC Summit to address the situation in the region, particularly in the DRC and in Zimbabwe. The SADC Troika meetings bring together past, current and future Chairpersons of the SADC (current Troika members are Lesotho, Zambia and Botswana).

During the summit, Heads of States and Government from that region should ask President Robert Mugabe to start discussions with the leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai, who, during the last weeks, has been arrested twice and badly treated during his detention, what triggered indignations and critics around the world. The majority of leaders from Southern Africa, expressed their diagreement with foreign, and particularly western, pressions and interventions; in that respect South Africa criticized what it called, "megaphone diplomacy", calling rather for a "discret diplomacy" at the SADC level and particularly for an internal dialogue between president Mugabe and the opposition.

Source: AFP; South Africa DOFA

The African Union hosts this day a concertation meeting in Addis Abeba with the Arab League and 7 Eastern Africa countries, gathered within the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), to address the situation in Somalia with the recent implication of Ethiopia, and the risks pose to this sub-region’s stability.This meeting happens in a fragile and unstable context marked with the intensification of combats between the transitionnal Somalian Governement and islamist combatants from the Union of Islamic Tribunals already installed in Mogadiscio (capital of the country) and controlling 60% of the country. The military intervention of Ethiopia at the sides of the Federal Somali Government of transition marks a turning in the current Somali crisis and make fear an escalation of the conflict.

The meeting, convened by the African Union Commission Chairperson, Alpha Oumar Konaré, is organised after a UN Security Council meeting held on December 26, 2006, without reaching an agreement, and during which its members appeared divised on the question of an immediate cessassion of hostilities.

France signed with the African Union (AU) a budgetary Aid Convention. This Convention, signed on 14 December 2006, between the Deputy Chairperson of the AU Commission and the France Permanent Representative to the Africa Union, aims at supporting the action of the African Union through its mission (AMIS) in Darfur. This financial assistance amounts to 1 million Euros.

Source: Press Release

The African Union Peace and Security Council met on November 30 at Abuja (Nigeria), for its 66^th session at the level of Heads of State and Government to address the situation in Darfur (Western Sudan).