She also urged the African Union to end its lingering relations with Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. American officials have been deeply frustrated by the organization’s efforts to mediate on behalf of Colonel Qaddafi, who for decades lavished support on African leaders — many of them autocratic — and led the group two years ago.
She also called for a peaceful resolution of the fighting that has flared in Sudan ahead of the planned declaration of independence by South Sudan on July 9.
The violence, in the disputed territory of Abyei and increasingly in other regions along what will be the new border, has threatened to unravel a peaceful separation that the Obama administration worked feverishly to ensure over the last year. Mrs. Clinton called the recent fight “deeply troubling.”
Talks aimed at resolving the dispute over Abyei took place in Addis Ababa over the last two days, with Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, in attendance. According to an American diplomat, Mr. Bashir agreed to withdraw his forces from the Abyei area before July 9, but the offer was heavily conditioned and no final agreement was announced.
Mrs. Clinton, on a five-day, three-country visit focused on trade and economic assistance to Africa, became the first secretary of state to address a session of the African Union, the regional organization created in 2002 that represents 53 nations on the continent, lacking only Morocco.
“Too many people in Africa still live under longstanding rulers, men who care too much about the longevity of their reign and too little about the legacy that should be built for their countries’ future,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Her speech echoed one in mid-January, just before the president of Tunisia was ousted in the first salvo in what became a wave of regional revolts. Then, she warned Arab leaders that their governments risked “sinking into the sand” if they did not change.
“The status quo is broken,” she said Monday. “The old ways of governing are no longer acceptable. It is time for leaders to lead with accountability, treat their people with dignity, respect their rights and deliver economic opportunity. And if they will not, then it is time for them to go.”
Mrs. Clinton did not specify any countries or leaders, but the United States has long opposed some of the most repressive governments, from Zimbabwe to Sudan. Representatives of the African Union’s members, including Libya’s, attended her speech in the conference hall of its headquarters here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital. She was greeted politely and even warmly at moments.
One of her most biting comments about leaders’ attitudes — “Some even claim to believe in democracy defined as one election, one time” — prompted laughter.
In the case of Libya, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that many members, though not all, disagreed with the military intervention in Libya led by the United States and NATO, but she urged all members to call for a genuine cease-fire and the departure of Colonel Qaddafi. She urged them to suspend operations of Libya’s embassies, expel diplomats loyal to Colonel Qaddafi, and open channels to the Libyan rebels.
“Your words and your actions could make the difference in bringing this situation to finally close,” she said.
The presence of Mr. Bashir, Sudan’s president, raised the potentially awkward possibility that Mrs. Clinton might encounter a leader indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes in another part of Sudan, Darfur. Mr. Bashir, however, left town before she arrived and did not attend the meetings at the African Union headquarters.
Mrs. Clinton did meet with representatives of both the north and south at her hotel in an effort to press for an agreement. One was an adviser to President Bashir, Nafi Ali Nafi; the other was the leader of southern Sudan, Salva Kiir.
Mrs. Clinton then had to abruptly curtail her trip. A volcano erupting in neighboring Eritrea sent an ash cloud that threatened to strand her in Ethiopia, so she departed late Monday night, canceling visits to a hospital and a school. A senior aide, Philippe Reines, said she promised to come back.
Clinton, the first U.S. secretary of state to address the 53-member African Union, said unreformed African leaders were themselves at risk from the same tide of democracy sweeping the Middle East, proclaiming “the status quo is broken and the old ways of governing are no longer acceptable.”
“It is true that Gaddafi has played a major role in providing financial support for many African nations and institutions, including the AU,” Clinton said in her speech at the AU’s headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
“But it has become clear that we are long past the time when he can remain in power.”
Clinton urged African states — many with long-standing diplomatic and financial ties to the oil-rich Libyan leader — to join the international coalition demanding his exit as the condition for a ceasefire.
She also urged them to close pro-Gaddafi Libyan embassies, expel his diplomats and build ties with the Benghazi-based rebel National Transitional Council, which the United States and its European and Arab allies are promoting as a future interim government for the country.
Shortly after Clinton’s AU speech, aides said her pilots had advised that an approaching ash cloud risked stranding her in the Horn of Africa if she did not depart swiftly.
Eritrea’s long-dormant Dubbi volcano erupted at around midnight on Sunday after a series of earthquakes in the remote, arid region bordering Ethiopia, hurling a plume of ash 13.5 km into the sky, the France-based Volcanic Ash Advisory Center said.
U.S. officials said the ash cloud was headed toward Addis Ababa.
“CHASED BY A VOLCANO”
Clinton met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as planned but canceled a scheduled media briefing to make time for meetings with delegations from Sudan’s north and south.
Violence is worsening in parts of Sudan ahead of the south’s formal independence on July 9. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir agreed on Sunday to pull troops out of the disputed border region of Abyei before the south secedes — a move which could help reduce tension.
However, the two sides have yet to agree on sensitive issues such as where to draw the common border and how to share oil revenues, leaving the potential for further conflict.
Clinton, speaking before her arrival in Addis Ababa during a stop in Tanzania, said the United States supported a proposal to put Ethiopian peacekeepers in the disputed Abyei region.
“I was hoping to spend a long time talking to you but I am being chased by a volcano,” Clinton told south Sudan’s President Salva Kiir.
She had a separate meeting with Nafie Ali Nafie, one of Bashir’s main advisers. There were no immediate details.
Clinton used her three-nation Africa tour to highlight the Obama administration’s drive to increase trade ties with Africa and encourage better political and economic governance.
She praised many African countries for implementing reforms and moving away from a tradition of strongman rule. But on a continent where autocrats still rule from Equatorial Guinea to Zimbabwe, Clinton said more needed to be done.
“We know that too many people in Africa live under long-standing rulers — men who care too much about the longevity of their reign and too little about the legacy that should be built for their country’s future,” she said.
U.S. officials say the African Union has played a constructive role in regional affairs like the political deadlock in Ivory Coast and mustering peacekeepers for other regional crises.
But the AU — long the beneficiary of Gaddafi’s largesse — has declined to join calls for Gaddafi’s removal, instead accusing Western nations of undermining its own efforts to find a solution to the conflict.
