- The African Union will discuss whether or not to lift the suspension of three junta-rules countries.
- These countries include Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
- The nations were also suspended from the Economic Community of West African States.
African Union Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat said on Friday the bloc will meet to discuss whether to lift the suspension of junta-ruled Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea.
All three nations have been suspended from the pan-African bloc as well as the regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), after undergoing military coups since 2020, and cannot participate in this weekend’s summit in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.
“This issue has not yet been discussed, there will be a meeting of the Peace and Security Council that will examine these requests, so there is no decision yet in this sense,” Faki told AFP without specifying a timeframe.
The diplomats of the West African countries began lobbying to reinstate their countries to the 55-member bloc, and met on Thursday with Comoran Foreign Minister Dhoihir Dhoulkamal, whose country will hold the AU’s rotating presidency.
The three foreign ministers had announced their joint diplomatic campaign last week in Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou.
Mali’s Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop also held meetings with Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde and his Rwandan and Algerian counterparts.
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