Officials meet in preparation for fourth African-Arab Summit

Preparations are underway for the upcoming fourth African-Arab Summit as well as the ninth senior officials meeting of the Coordination Committee of the Africa-Arab Partnership.

Officials from the African Union Commission (AUC) and the General Secretariat of the League of Arab States (LAS) met Feb. 28 to provide updates on progress being made on these preparations as well as to talk about how putting resolution 2 from last year's Africa-Arab Summit was going.

The summit's prepatory committee meeting was headed by senior level officials including Rashed Al Hajiri, ambassador of Kuwait, and Awad Ahmed Sakine, ambassador of the Republic of Chad and the chairperson of the Permanent Representative Committee of the African Union. Meeting attendees came from Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Mauritania, Kuwait and Egypt.

The meeting on the resolution was headed by co-chair Zeid El Sabban, director of the Africa and Africa-Arab Cooperation Department of the League of Arab States. He met with Saleh Sahboun, head of the permanent representative of the League of Arab States to Ethiopia, AU and ECA; Abdelhamid Bouzaher, head of the African Union Permanent Delegation to the League of Arab States; and other staffers and officials from the League of Arab States and the African Union Commission.

The resolution is now in the draft stage. The draft paper was titled “Rationalization of the Implementation and Follow up Mechanism of the Africa-Arab Partnership.” It was compiled for the meeting for representatives from the League of Arab States.