South African President Thabo Mbeki appealed Wednesday for international assistance for the African Union, which he said has been hampered by the severe lack of logistics and financial resources to carry out peacekeeping mandate on the continent, according to dpa. But while South Africa, current chair of the UN Security Council, had wanted to focus only on the issue of peacekeeping, there were growing demands that Mbeki also discuss the ongoing standoff over unreleased election results in neighbouring Zimbabwe. The council meeting at UN headquarters brought together the presidents of South Africa, Somalia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania, the prime ministers of Britain and Italy, and about a dozen of foreign ministers, deputy foreign ministers. "The issue of funding regional peacekeeping operations is central to defining and streamlining the relationship between the UN and AU," Mbeki said in opening a day-long debate in the UN Security Council, which was convened to discuss ways to strengthen the UN-AU working relationship. "Today's debate should give a clear indication as to the kind of mechanism and processes that should be put in place to achieve this objective," he said. Mbeki pointed out that the AU has established an organizational structure to deal with conflicts in Africa, but it was lacking the means to operate. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has proposed setting up a UN-AU panel to study ways for both sides to meet the challenges in Africa. Envoys from France, Britain and the United States had called on Mbeki to include in the debate the unsettled dispute of Zimbabwe's presidential elections, which had been kept out of the African summit at the UN. France's secretary of state for foreign affairs and human rights, Rama Yade, told reporters before the meeting that her government planned to ask that Zimbabwe be included in the debate. Ban on Tuesday also said he would add it to the agenda.
