African heads try to break O.A.U. impasse

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 8

African heads try to break O.A.U. impasse

NZPA-Reuter Tripoli African leaders worked through the night to try to find a compromise over the seating of a delegation from Chad and rescue the Organisation of African Unity from its second collapse in four months. The assistant O.A.U. Secre-tary-General, Mr Peter Onu, told reporters that the O.A.U. chairman, President Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, had involved all 19 heads of State in intensive informal talks aimed at breaking the deadlock.

The Tripoli session, already aborted once in August, is at stalemate because of a rift between moderate and radical groups over who should represent Chad. The issue prevented the troubled nineteenth summit meeting opening on time.

The moderates back the government of Hissene Habre which seized power in June from Goukouni Oueddei, whose Libyan-backed admin-

istration had been endorsed by the O.A.U. last in an attempt to end years of factional bloodshed in the impoverished West African country. But the radicals, led by Libya, oppose the seating of Mr Habre’s delegation and want the issue discussed by the summit meeting, leaving the Chad seat vacant until then. The issue has threatened, to deprive the summit talks, if they open, of a quorum for the second time in four months.

Delegates say that .this would have grave consequences for the future of the organisation. They also said that if the summit talks are abandoned it would deprive the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, of the O.A.U. chairmanship.

Last week 14 States walked out of a Ministerial session, convened to draw up a summit agenda, in protest at its failure to seat the

Habre delegation, depriving, the meeting of a quorom. Delegates fear a similar protest over Chad would leave the summit meeting with less than the 34 of the; total 51 member States it. requires to be legal. At the centre of yesterday’s informal talks was a. six-nation committee set up after the last aborted summit meeting to persuade member States to put the interests of the O.A.U. ahead of their individual stands on the divisive issues. The committee succeeded in persuading the Polisario guerrilla front to stay away from the session. Its controversial admission to the O.A.U. in February prompted a 21-nation boycott of the earlier summit talks which left it without a quorum. The Polisario, fighting Moroccan control of the Western Sahara, had been admitted in a move which split the O.A.U. along almost the same lines as the present rift in Tripoli.