ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was set to hold talks on Wednesday with several African leaders on the conflicts in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa regions.
She landed early Wednesday in Addis Ababa for a two-day visit and was due to first hold talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, one of Washington's key allies in the region.
The two are expected to discuss the situation in neighbouring Somalia, where Ethiopian troops supporting the transitional government are battling Islamist insurgents.
While en route to the talks she told journalists on her plane she is "increasingly concerned about several African crisis spots," in particular the Horn of Africa, Sudan and the Great Lakes.
Rice said her talks with leaders and ministers from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) aimed to shore up efforts launched in 2004 by President George W. Bush in the Great Lakes region.
She said the talks in Addis Ababa, headquarters of the African Union, presented a good opportunity "to take stock of where we are and try to move the international efforts forward on each of these" crises, but gave no details.
Rice had been scheduled to meet Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to discuss the latest efforts to bring peace to the Horn of Africa country which has been locked in civil war since 1991, but he was unexpectedly hospitalised in Nairobi on Tuesday.
Newly-appointed Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein is expected to fill in for the ailing president.
The international community is divided over the usefulness of sending UN peacekeeping forces to ensure stability in Somalia, where violence continues despite the rout of Islamist forces 10 months ago by Ethiopian troops.
Washington wants to broaden the support base of the government.
"The Somali leadership is going to have to really reach out to all the elements that are not (linked) with terrorism," Rice told journalists.
Washington also wants to tackle the humanitarian emergency, isolate extremists and push for quicker deployment of African Union peacekeeping forces in Somalia.
On Sudan, Rice will also discuss efforts to shore up the fragile 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Arab Islamist government of President Omar el-Beshir in Khartoum and the mainly non-Muslim southern Sudanese.
"I'm concerned that the CPA is not moving forward," Rice said, adding that whenever such a complex process stalled, "there is always a chance it will start to unravel."
In her talks with Ethiopia's Prime Minister Zenawi the two are likely to discuss renewed tensions with neighboring Eritrea, US diplomats said.
Ethiopia remains in a tense standoff with its arch-enemy Eritrea, following the dissolution last week of a commission tasked with brokering an agreement on the neighbours' disputed common border.
The Horn of Africa neighbors fought a border war from 1998 to 2000 that left 70,000 people dead.
SOURCE: AFP, December 5, 2007