Monitoring Desk
ADDIS ABABA: Israel has accused Iran of scheming the expulsion of a top diplomat from the African Union summit Saturday, with the help of South Africa and Algeria.
The incident occurred on the opening day of the summit, where leaders are discussing a large number of challenges facing African continent, including the deadly violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and the Sahel region, and the worse drought in the Horn of Africa.
A video circulating on social media shows guards escorting Sharon Bar-li, Israel’s deputy director general for Africa, out of the AU assembly, which opened on Saturday in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. An spokesman of Israeli Foreign Ministry described the incident as “severe,” noting Bar-li was “an accredited observer with an entry tag.”
He said: “It is saddening to see the African Union taken hostage by a small number of extremist states like South Africa and Algeria, which are driven by hatred and controlled by Iran.” The incident followed a long-running row over Israel’s accreditation to the 55-member bloc.
The 2021 decision by African Union Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat triggered a rare dispute within a body that values consensus, with powerful member states, notably South Africa, loudly protesting the move.
African Union summit in 2022
In 2022, the African Union summit suspended a debate on whether to withdraw the accreditation and established a committee to address the issue, but the bloc has not said whether it would be discussed this year.
An African Union official said that the individual who was “asked to leave” was not invited to attend the moot, with a non-transferable invitation only issued to Israel’s ambassador to the African Union, Aleli Admasu. “It is regrettable that the individual in question would abuse such a courtesy,” the official said.
All eyes are on the African Union to see if it can achieve ceasefires in the eastern DRC and the Sahel, where M23 rebels have seized parts of territory and sparked a diplomatic row between Rwanda’s government and Kinshasa.
