Libya's Qaddafi elected chairman of African Union

Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, whose government has been accused of human rights violations during his 39-year rule, was elected as the new chairman of the African Union, replacing Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete. Qaddafi, wearing a gold robe and guarded by a female bodyguard in a red beret, accepted the position in a speech to the AU's heads-of-state summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, today. He cut short his speech, in which he discussed the importance of Islamic traditions and African chiefs, saying he was too tired to continue. "I think the coming time will be a time of serious work and a time of action and not words," Qaddafi said. Qaddafi, 66, is the first North African leader to hold the top post at the AU since it was established in 2002 as a successor to the Organization of African Unity. He has previously proposed the creation of a so-called United States of Africa that would incorporate the continent's 53 nations into a political federation. Libya is Africa's third-biggest oil producer and has the continents largest reserves of crude. "It's an ambition he's long held" to chair the AU, Steven Gruzd, an analyst at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said today from Johannesburg. "Many of the institutions in the new AU have come out of ideas Qaddafi proposed, including the pan-African parliament." Qaddafi has ruled Libya since seizing power in a 1969 coup. His government has sponsored rebel movements in countries including Sudan, Chad and Niger, and accepted responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. Darfur Peace Talks In October 2007, Qaddafi hosted United Nations-backed peace talks between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebel movements. The talks failed to produce a negotiated settlement to the Darfur conflict after most of the rebel groups boycotted the meeting. Libya has been accused of human-rights violations by organizations including New York-based Human Rights Watch. While the North African country made improvements in recent years, it is still plagued by arrests and the incarceration of political prisoners, the torture of detainees, the absence of a free press and the violation of women's and foreigners' rights, Human Rights Watch said in a September report. "This is certainly a step backwards in terms of the profile of the person who is going to represent Africa on the world stage, certainly when you compare him with Kikwete," Reed Brody, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch, said in an interview today in Addis Ababa. Nuclear-Arms Program Qaddafi in September met former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in what was the highest-level official U.S. visit to Libya in more than 50 years. The meeting came after the Libyan leader abandoned a nuclear-arms program and renounced terrorism. Relations between the U.S. and Libya reached a low point with the 1986 attack on Tripoli and Benghazi ordered by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who had described Qaddafi as a "mad dog." Qaddafi is known for traveling with a retinue of armed female bodyguards and sleeping in a large Bedouin-style tent in foreign cities. In August, he flew 200 traditional African chiefs to Libya, where he was crowned "King of Kings" in a ceremony in Mediterranean coastal town of Benghazi, according to the British Broadcasting Corp. While Qaddafi has pushed for faster integration on the continent, he will have limited ability to drive the AU agenda "because the chairman has only got so much power," Gruzd said.