Mugabe, Gaddafi want federal government for Africa

Mugabe, Gaddafi want federal government for Africa

MUGABE

• Mutambara: Zimbabwe's failure is AU's demise

• Mugabe rails against West during trade summit

• Zimbabwe accuses UN of ambush

• AU Report: What Mugabe didn't want you to see

• AU report a positive policy shift

• 'All they do is drink tea' - Archbishop Ncube

• Annan in amazing blast at Mugabe

• AU blasts Zim human rights abuses

By Staff Reporter

LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi and visiting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe want African leaders to agree next month to unite Africa under one government to help it solve its own problems, state media said on Thursday.

The two men, both among the world’s longest serving leaders, agreed in talks in Tripoli on Wednesday that the 53-nation African Union (AU) should be turned into an embryonic federal government at an AU heads of state summit in Ghana on July 1-2.

“They consulted on the upcoming African Union summit due to be held in Ghana, and in relation to this they emphasised the establishment of the African Union government,” Libya’s official Jana news agency said.

“This plan embodies the hopes and ambitions of the continent’s people, and the only means for the continent’s independence, political and economic freedom and progress and development,” it added.

Gaddafi has long favoured the establishment of a United States of Africa as a means of ridding the continent of 800 million people of what he calls Western colonialism. The project attracts emotional support from some in Africa since the idea of a federal United States of Africa was first promoted by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president and pioneer of Pan-Africanism, but many doubt its practicality.

The topic is due to be debated at the Ghana gathering, which will take place 50 years after Ghana became the first black nation in sub-Saharan Africa to win independence.

Jana said the two leaders also discussed a number of other issues but did not elaborate. There was no mention of energy ties between Zimbabwe and oil-producing Libya.

Zimbabwe had received oil from Libya under a $360 million loan facility which the southern African country was meant to repay in part by supplying agricultural produce to Tripoli, but the deal collapsed in late 2002 after Harare failed to meet its obligations. - Reuters
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com