AU summit kicks off in Uganda

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KAMPALA, Jul 25 (aljazeera.net): Being held two weeks after Somalia's al-Shabab fighters bombed Kampala in an attempt to force Uganda to withdraw its troops from their country, the summit opened on Sunday with a solemn two-minute silence for the victims of the attack.
Yoweri Museveni, the Ugandan president, urged African leaders to defeat "the terrorists" and "sweep them out of Africa" during his address.
Bingu wa Mutharika, the chairman of the AU and president of Malawi, joined him in condemning the perpetrators of the Kampala blasts "in the strongest terms".
"The African Union stands with you, my brother President [Museveni] and with the people of Uganda," Mutharika said.
Al-Shabab said that the attacks were in response to the deaths of Somali civilians at the hands of AU peacekeepers.
The group, which the US says is allied to al-Qaeda, has warned of further violence in Uganda and Burundi unless they pull their troops out of Somalia.
Despite the attack, the AU said it is considering sending more troops to Somalia, which has topped the list of Foreign Policy magazine's "failed states"for the third year in a row.
Seven of the top 10 failed states on the list are in Africa.Guinea and Djibouti announced a plan on Friday to send troopsto bolster the AU peacekeeping force charged with protecting the transitional government in Somalia.
If Guinea and Djibouti fulfill their pledges, it will provide a major boost to the 6,000 soldiers from Uganda and Burundi already deployed, although, in the past, larger African nations such as Nigeria and Ghana have not followed through on their promises of support.
Abdurahman Adnan Ibrahim, deputy prime minister of Somalia's transitional government, welcomed the troops and said the government was expecting more from the AU.
"The AU is now doing what we have been telling them for a long time that this [al-Shabab] is not only an enemy for Somalia but is the enemy of the whole region ... Every country now realises the reality on the ground," he told Al Jazeera.
AU diplomats has said that their peacekeepers' mandate would be reviewed at the Kampala summit and it was likely the 8,000-strong cap on troop numbers for the force would be lifted.