End senseless wars, urges Mbeki

A police officer guards the summit building in Durban

DURBAN, South Africa -- South African President Thabo Mbeki has launched the African Union (AU), urging its 53 members to work together for peace and prosperity.

"Today, we must defeat poverty, disease and ignorance and end the senseless wars and conflicts causing so much pain and suffering," he told a 30,000 crowd, including about 40 presidents and monarchs, at King's Park stadium, Durban on Tuesday.

"This is a moment of hope for our continent and its peoples."

A 21-gun salute, bands and dancers marked the event. Special guests included former South African leader Nelson Mandela and the Senegal football team, who made the World Cup semifinal.

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Modelled on the European Union, the AU aims to increase trade and prosperity and stamp out corruption and human rights abuses.

It will be able to intervene in wars with institutions designed to span the continent, including a parliament, a security council and a standby peacekeeping force.

The AU replaces the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was set up in 1963 and had a policy of non-interference in the affairs of member states. Critics said this policy meant election abuse and genocide, like in Rwanda, was not checked.

But Mbeki, the AU's chairman and host of the first meeting, said the old organisation helped unify Africa and free the continent from colonial rule and apartheid.

"The OAU proved our critics wrong. It engaged in struggle for almost four decades to realise the goals its founders had set in 1963," he added.

Leaders of the AU, which is expected to have its headquarters in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, where the OAU was based, say change will not happen quickly.

"People were expecting us to run before we walk," Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told Reuters. "People should be patient with us, bearing in mind that even the (Western) countries that are shouting at the top today about being democracies, it took them time to get there."

The leaders will meet at an interim summit in six months.

Preparations for Tuesday's opening were dogged by challenges to the charter, with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi calling for a single army. His proposed amendment was rejected.