The communiqué of the 291st meeting of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU), issued on August 26 after the deliberations on the Libyan conflict, reaffirms the continental body's strong commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Libya.

In the communiqué, the AU reiterates its willingness to work with the Arab League, European Union (EU) and NATO to support the Libyan people and stakeholders.

The indication of the communiqué points toward the AU's desire to maintain and robustly embed the African identity, whilst at the same time being a critical player on the global stage.

In March 2011, when it met in Mauritania, the AU opposed foreign military intervention in Libya citing it as an abrogation of the principle of sovereignty. The AU viewed the intervention of NATO in Libya as being overtly in subjugation of the Constitutive Act, which proffers such action to be undertaken in full consultation with the AU itself.

It is however critical to note that NATO and the AU have worked together well in some other instances in the past. In June 2005, the AU requested NATO to assist in its mission in the Sudanese province of Darfur. In March of 2005, AU Commissioner for Peace and Security Said Djinnit suggested a strong AU-NATO relationship, which would ultimately aid the capacity building of the AU's own missions.

NATO also assisted the AU in September 2007 with an assessment of the operationalization of the African Standby Force (ASF). They have also cooperated in Somalia.

NATO-AU history

There is therefore a history of ongoing collaborative conversations between NATO and the AU. However the Libyan conflict seems to pose a stern challenge to that relationship and is therefore likely to shape the future path of this association. This is all because the AU seems to have taken a position at odds with the actions of NATO in Libya. The AU's voice seemed to drown in the wider periphery of the coalition of forces and interests that are at play in the Libyan conflict situation.

To date, the AU has not been able to halt the tension and fighting in Libya despite its call for a ceasefire and the pursuance of a conciliatory process. In fact, the events in Libya have taken their own trajectory, which has overly disenchanted the AU's preferences for a mediation process engrained in the notion of "an African solution to an African problem."

The international support that the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya has received, now also being officially recognized by China, has been laced by the hosting of the "Friends of Libya" meeting in Paris in early September 2011. The meeting focused primarily on the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country but ironically it was hosted outside of the continent and without the institutional involvement of the AU - whose mandate for such an agenda however seems to be outlined in the earlier quoted Constitutive Act signed in Lome, Togo in 2000.

In reference to this Paris meeting, the China Daily newspaper carried an English commentary, which read, "a bad example of Western intervention in developing countries." President Nicolas Sarkozy and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain both asserted that the meeting was of an international nature in order to allow the NTC to come into contact with the international community to ensure it gets assistance for the reconstruction of Libya. However for whatever reason, the non-emergence of the AU at such a critical meeting really points toward some disparity.

One of the risks arising from the Libyan situation is the possibility of direct future involvement either of NATO or other Western power intervention in African conflicts (with the exclusion of the AU or other relevant continental bodies). The responsibility of creating safeguards for eliminating the circumvention of the AU in the future lies with the continental body itself. The AU must self evaluate against the growing tirade of international diplomacy and geo-politics.