20120218
AFP
African leaders on Saturday met for talks on security issues as fresh violence in Mali has sparked what rights groups say is the Sahel region's worst human rights crisis in 20 years.

More than a dozen leaders attended the talks in the small West African country of Benin. They issued no statement at the end because it was an informal meeting, said Benin foreign affairs officials.

It was the first African Union meeting convened by Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi, who took the helm of the continental body last month.

At the start of the meeting he touched on the upsurge of unrest in the Sahel, where Tuareg rebels have fought Mali troops and regional al-Qaeda extremists have launched a series of kidnappings.

"Africa is truly the continent of the future, of hope and expectations but the great paradox is that our continent is not united in its march towards peace, stability, security, progress, prosperity and development," said Yayi.

He bemoaned the "persistence of crises and the emergence of new threats to security... such as endemic and persistent insecurity in the Sahel region."

Yayi also spoke of the upsurge in terrorism and drugs trafficking in parts of the continent, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and off the Somali coast. West African waters have seen a spike in piracy in recent months.

Other leaders who attended the talks in Benin's commercial capital Cotonou were from Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa and Togo.

Conclusions from the talks would be discussed at the next AU summit, Yayi's foreign affairs advisor, Mariam Aladji Boni Diallo, told reporters.

Commenting on the Mali fighting, rights group Amnesty International has said that a Tuareg offensive raging in the country's north has sparked "the worst human rights crisis" in the area in 20 years.

Tuareg rebels, boosted by the return of fighters of late dictator Moamer Kadhafi in Libya, launched an offensive in mid-January and have attacked northern towns, demanding autonomy for their nomadic desert tribe.

Scores have died and thousands have fled into neighbouring countries.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that fighting had displaced at least 60,000 people inside Mali.

More than 44,000 others had fled to neighbouring Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Niger, according to the UN refugee agency.

The Economic Community of West African States on Friday voiced "deep concern" at the deteriorating security and humanitarian situation in the Sahel region that stretches across Africa south of the Sahara.

The leaders had also been expected to discuss a dispute over the AU commission's top post, after former South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma challenged Jean Ping of Gabon at a summit last month.

In his opening remarks at the talks, Yayi said a special panel had been set up to deal with that issue.

"A committee of eight members drawn from the five regions of the continent supported by Gabon, South Africa and the African Union president," will review the still-contested post, Yayi said.

The 54-member AU was deadlocked and temporarily extended Ping's term, but the contest exposed divides between geographical regions and between French- and English-speaking Africa.