The African Union (AU) has condemned a “wave” of military coups that has seen an unprecedented number of member states suspended from the bloc, a senior official said on Sunday, the last day of its annual summit.
The coups were among the main issues expected to be discussed at the summit, along with the AU’s response to a war in the north of host country Ethiopia.
Less than two weeks before the summit began on Saturday, Burkina Faso became the fourth country to be suspended by the AU after disgruntled soldiers toppled Burkinabe President Roch Marc Christian Kabore. Guinea, Mali and Sudan are also currently suspended.
“Every African leader in the assembly has condemned unequivocally ... the wave of unconstitutional changes of government,” Bankole Adeoye, head of the AU’s Peace and Security Council, told a news conference on Sunday.
“At no time in the history of the African Union have we had four countries in one calendar year, in 12 months, been suspended,” Adeoye said.
Addressing African foreign ministers ahead of the summit, Moussa Faki Mahamat, chair of the African Union Commission, denounced a “worrying resurgence” of such coups.
However, the AU has been accused of an inconsistent response, notably by not suspending Chad after a military council took over following the death of long-time Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno on the battlefield in April last year.
While Adeoye touted the AU’s use of suspensions to punish coup leaders, analysts say the body must do more to prevent coups.
“It is only when crisis hits that we say: ‘Gosh, how come this country is falling apart like this so quickly?’” said Solomon Dersso, founder of the AU-focused Amani Africa think tank.
Most of the summit took place behind closed doors, so it is unclear whether it substantively addressed the war in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia hosts the AU, which makes an intervention by the bloc especially delicate, and Faki waited until nine months after the fighting began to appoint Olusegun Obasanjo as a special envoy tasked with trying to broker a ceasefire.
Ethiopia has also held a seat on the Peace and Security Council throughout the conflict.
“We are all working for peace,” Adeoye said.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS