Colonel Khaddafi’s dream comes true: African Union formed

At a meeting of 40 Heads of Government in Sirte, Libya, the African Union was set up, a dream come true for Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Khaddafi. The African Union will eventually substitute the Organisation for African Unity, set up in 1963 in Ethiopia. In an audacious programme, which will without doubt require the support of friendly foreign powers, the African nations intend to abolish frontiers, promote the free circulation of people and goods and create a Single Currency. Such an objective is not simply a pipe-dream. It makes a lot of sense. Most African frontiers were defined by colonialist powers in Western Europe (Portugal, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Italy), not through any malicious will but through total ignorance of local interests. Should the African Union function well, and one hopes most sincerely that it will (and why not?), ethnic and racial problems created by Europeans arrogantly drawing lines on maps (one has only to look at the numerous straight lines on the geopolitical map of the African continent) have a real chance of being solved, depending on local pressures and not international ones. This is one of the political dreams of Colonel Khaddafi, a proposal which was presented formally at the meeting of the Organisation for African Unity in Lome, Togo, last July. The “United States of Africa” may take years to form de facto but today we are speaking for the first time of a new geopolitical grouping which, in its time, will take its relevant place on the stage of world politics. May Pravda.Ru be the first newspaper to welcome this initiative, in a spirit of welcoming friendship for the new African Union.

TIMOTHY BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.RU LISBON