Africans at summit debate unity

Wow! Just wow! I didn't anticipate this scenario at all. So much for my claim of having crystal balls (which I do). No really. I do have several crystal balls. Many more than most people.

But I digress.

African leaders argued fiercely yesterday over whether to rapidly create a single state stretching from the Cape to Cairo, and one small group threatened to break away and forge ahead with the project.

Delegates said the atmosphere in an African Union summit was charged, as a group of states led by Libya's Moammar Khadafy and Senegal's Abdoulaye Wade argued with a more gradualist majority led by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki.

"I think everybody is a little bit tense, because they know how serious this is," said Senegal's foreign minister, Cheikh Tidiane Gadio.

"It is getting heated between Khadafy and the southern Africans," said one delegate who did not want to be identified.

While almost all the 53 member nations agree with the goal of African integration and eventual unity, most of the summit leaders want that to be a gradual process.

Gadio held out the prospect that a small group of states committed to creating a United States of Africa could push forward without the others and sign up to federation, ironically splitting the AU over the idea of unity.

"If Senegal wants to build this union with two, three, four more countries, there is not a country in this room that has enough power to tell Senegal you cannot do it," he said.

So maybe this will happen much quicker than I thought.

And no, the picture above is not of my crystal balls. Mine are much larger. Hahaha.

Did I mention the brass ones?

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