MALABO, EQUATORIAL GUINEA — Organizers printed Moammar Gadhafi’s portrait and mounted it on one of the flags decorating the road to the African Union summit venue back when he was expected to rule for life.
Now his proud face flaps incongruously in the wind here, the only sign of a man who has long dominated this gathering of African leaders but now is mired in Libya’s civil war.
It’s a jolting image that reminds delegates of how much has changed on the continent in the past six months and underscores the organization’s ambivalence toward one of its most prominent members.
The summit is scheduled to open Thursday without the Libyan leader. It’s fitting, however, that in order to reach the conference hall, delegates will need to pass under his defiant gaze.
Even though Col. Gadhafi is not in attendance, the problem he poses looms large for the body representing Africa’s 53 nations.
“There is a very strong number of countries in the African Union who believe that Gadhafi’s time is up and that he should go, and there are some who - to a greater or lesser extent - do not share that view,” Britain’s International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell told reporters in London before heading to the talks.
Diplomats from all over the world are descending on Malabo, the capital of this minuscule nation located on an island off the western edge of Africa, in an effort to persuade Col. Gadhafi’s peers to force him from power.
Col. Gadhafi inspires deeply conflicted emotions on a continent where numerous strongmen still cling to power, including several who came to office in coups backed by Col. Gadhafi as well as others whose regimes could be destabilized if the wave of popular unrest spreads south.
Compared to the rest of the world, the African Union has been one of the most conciliatory voices toward Col. Gadhafi, condemning NATO airstrikes even as evidence mounted that Col. Gadhafi’s military was carrying out massacres of civilians.
Yet even in the hours since delegates began arriving in Malabo, the mood appears to be shifting and old alliances are beginning to erode.
On Wednesday in nearby Gabon, President Ali Bongo Ondimba, whose father converted from Christianity to Islam in an effort to court Col. Gadhafi’s favor, held a news conference to urge Col. Gadhafi to go.
“For the good of his people, for the good of his country as well as Africa, it would be good if he were to choose of his own volition - and I do mean of his own volition - to step down,” Mr. Bongo said.
Britain’s Minister for Africa Henry Bellingham said he has met with the majority of the foreign ministers of the 53 member nations attending the conference and found that even those who previously were reluctant to call for Col. Gadhafi’s ouster are privately agreeing that he should go.
“I believe there is certainly a change in the whole perception of Gadhafi. We are in a very different position to the one we were in just five, six weeks ago. Then we were talking about a stalemate. Now there’s no stalemate. Gadhafi is losing his grip,” Mr. Bellingham said. “Despite the fact that the Libyan flag is flying on the access road to the conference center, there has been a big turnaround.”
Col. Gadhafi, who used Libya’s oil wealth to fund the transformation of the old Organization of African Unity into the African Union in 2002, has dominated the AU summit stage for years, becoming its chairman in 2009.
He was a longtime proponent of the United States of Africa, a proposal he shared with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who made a point of inviting Col. Gadhafi to his inauguration as well as to the opening of a monument in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
But Mr. Wade became one of the first prominent AU leaders to break ranks, first by recognizing the rebels and then by traveling to eastern Libya to meet with them. Upon his return to Dakar, Mr. Wade delivered a stinging rebuke to his former ally on state television.
“At the African Union, I was the only person that could speak to him, that told him the truth since I don’t owe him anything. He hasn’t built so much as a school in Senegal,” Mr. Wade said during the June 9 broadcast.
“[I told him] you came to power through a coup d’etat more than 40 years ago. You have never had elections. You pretended to speak in the name of the people. Everyone knows that what you installed is a dictatorship. You have done horrible things … I look at you now in the eyes and tell you … that in the interest of the Libyan people, you need to step down.”
Mr. Wade’s and now Mr. Bongo’s public stances contrast with the approach of South African President Jacob Zuma, who leads the AU’s ad hoc committee on Libya and has been one of the most forceful voices against the NATO strikes.
Even the ad hoc committee, though, seems to be changing its position toward the Libyan leader.
Hints of that change can be found in the committee’s communique released over the weekend. It says the AU welcomed Col. Gadhafi’s decision not to take part in negotiations to end the turmoil in his country.
Previously, the AU had been a proponent for talks, even though the rebels insisted Col. Gadhafi must leave power before any negotiations could take place.
“It’s an extraordinary leap forward,” Mr. Bellingham said. “Because the high-level panel was until recently talking about Gadhafi as being part of the solution - instead of part of the problem.”
Col. Gadhafi usually arrives at AU summits in his ballooning robes and dark sunglasses surrounded by a phalanx of female bodyguards. Reporters looked forward to his theatrics, which always involved his refusal to sleep in a hotel room and his insistence on pitching an enormous tent, usually on the grounds of the host country’s best hotel.
He also was known for his rambling, table-pounding tirades, like the one he delivered in Kenya in 2008 when he blamed democracy for causing unrest and bloodshed following the nation’s disputed election.
This year, the government of Equatorial Guinea built luxury beachfront villas for each of the heads of state in the African Union.
It’s unclear who is staying in the one reserved for Libya: Col. Gadhafi’s envoy or the delegation of rebels that diplomats say arrived here earlier this week.
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