Jean Ping: AU feels "totally" ignored by UN on Libya

Jean Ping

The African Union feels completely ignored by World bodies in the quest to restore peace in conflict ridden Libya, the AU commission chairman Jean Ping has said.

Speaking in an interview with a journalist on Friday, the AU Commission Chair said efforts by AU to intervene in the early days of the Libyan crisis were curtailed by the UN Security Council and since then the regional body has been left out of peace talks on Libya.

“All our programmes which I mentioned to you were stopped by the decision of UN Security Council. We were supposed to go to Libya on the 18th in Tripoli and on the 19th to Benghazi. Then the decision of the Security Council came. We asked permission to go too they say don't go. So we stopped going there,” he said.

He said a meeting was scheduled in Paris with the AU but nothing has been heard ever since, even though ministers of western countries on their own have made attempts to resolve the crisis in Cairo.

“Nobody talk to us; no body consult us” he lamented.

Asked if the AU has been ignored in the UN, his answer was blunt: “Totally, totally,” he said.

He vehemently disagreed with the assertion that the AU has lost its respect and power to arbitrate because individual countries have been compromised in their support for Libya and its leader Muammar Gaddhafi.

Story by Nathan Gadugah/Myjoyonline.com/Ghana