WE MISSED OBASANJO IN SUDAN TALKS, SAYS US TOP OFFICIAL ON AFRICA
LAOLU AKANDE, New York
Sunday Sept 24, 2005
Nigeria's leadership and its president's towering influence among African leaders was reportedly missed this week in New York as African leaders including several heads of states from the continent battle to determine the best formular to halt what has been described as the genocide in Darfur.
Indeed not a few diplomatic and international engagements of Nigeria and its president sufferred due to the air tragedy involving a military plane that killed some top Nigeria's Generals and others last weekend.
For instance, the Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, African presidents attending the United Nations General Assembly and foreign affairs ministers held a meeting at the African Union office in New York with the Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir where the issue of an international United Nations force for Sudan was discussed. The meeting was held under the auspices of the AU's Peace and Security Council, fashioned much after the United Nations Security Council.
At the meeting efforts to persuade Omar all Bashir of Sudan on the need to deply a UN force, a resolution already passed by the UN Security Council, fell on deaf ears. Many at the meeting believed that it was through the UN force that the worsening conditions in Darfur can be contained and eventually stopped especially because of the logistical constraints and limited resources of the AU troops.
But the Sudanese president continued his rejection of a UN force and was believed to have left the meeting before the end in protest.
In an exclusive chat with, the US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Dr. Jendayi Frazer lamented that Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo was absent at that meeting.
The US government has been in the forefront of depicting the Darfur crisis as a genocide and led the UN resolution for a UN force to be deployed in Darfur. But the Americans have insisted that the onus is on African leaders to ensure that Sudanese crisis does not become another Rwanda.
Said Frazer, a top aide to the US president and Secretary of state Condoleeza Rice on Africa one of the problems at the meeting of African leaders in New York on Wednesday was because the Nigerian president could not attend "with his strong and decisive voice."
Frazer said Nigeria's leadership was much missed. Said she: "We probably would have gotten a much more desirable outcome if Obasanjo was in the room." According to her the signing of the Darfur Peace Agreement, DPA, had been due partly to Nigeria's president and former foreign affairs minister's influence alongside the former OUA Secretary General Salim Salim.
Indeed President Olusegun Obasanjo's plans to participate in this year's United Nations General Assembly-which incidentally is the last before he relinquishes power next April- have suffered due to the tragedy and so too his expectations to possibly confer with US President George W. Bush, who was also in New York for the better past of last week attending the global summit of the General Assembly which opened last Tuesday at the headquarters of the world body here.
Besides, an evening of celebration being organised by the Leon H. Sullivan Foundation to honor Obasanjo last Wednesday in New York was also canceled because of the plane crash, according to African Americans who were putting the programme together.
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