Khartoum — The general secretary of NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa's Development), Firmino Mucavele, declared on Sunday that Sudan's decision to join the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) has created an opportunity for Africans to assess from within the problems of the largest country on the continent and help solve them.

Mucavele was speaking to Mozambican reporters in Khartoum to cover this week's summit of the African Union. Most democratic members of the AU have had no problems in signing up for Peer Review. Others have dragged their feet, and it was only on Sunday morning, at a meeting of the NEPAD Implementation Committee, that Sudan joined the Peer Review Mechanism (alongside Zambia and Sao Tome and Principe).

"Sudan's membership of the APRM means a lot", said Mucavele.

"It means we have the opportunity, from inside, to assess, criticise and learn from each other".

Mucavele said that currently the methods and procedures used in the APRM are undergoing evolution, in order to find ways of speeding them up.

"This is a new process", he said. "We're not used to it, but we're developing the capacities for it. What the member countries think is that we're advancing".

"Some countries are pessimistic and some are optimistic", he admitted. "But the most important thing is that we're in this together".

As part of this assessment, he said, a meeting will be held in Senegal in the next three months, in an exercise whose main goal is "to make Africans participate in their own development".

"Nobody is going to bring solutions to our problems", said Mucavele. "Nobody is going to give us enough resources. And so we are negotiating where it is possible to negotiate, and where it is not possible we use our own resources".

Peer review has so far happened in two countries, Ghana and Rwanda. A detailed analysis was made in June last year, and the final report on the conclusions reached will be presented during this summit.

At the Sunday meeting, noting the importance of openness and frankness in dealing with internal questions in the context of the Peer Review Mechanism, the current AU chairperson, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, cited a Nigerian proverb which declares "you can't kill a bedbug without getting blood on your hands". "We still have bedbugs in our clothes, and we are counting on the support of the international community for our success", said Obasanjo.

Sudan's membership of the APRM is regarded by some observers in Khartoum as just a gambit to ensure that Sudanese President Omar Al-Bachir becomes the next chairperson of the AU. That prospect is regarded with dismay by some of Sudan's neighbours, notably Chad, and by all those horrified at Sudan's dismal human rights record.

Even the decision to hold the summit in Khartoum was polemical, given the violence in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, regarded in many quarters as genocidal, and the links of those mainly responsible, the Janjaweed militias, with the Sudanese army. The Sudanese regime is now on a diplomatic offensive to ensure that Al-Bachir will head the AU for the next year. The Sudanese news agency, SUNA, has claimed that east African countries, including Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea, favour the Sudanese candidature.

But, unlike the AU's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), there is nothing automatic about the president of the country hosting the summit becoming the chairperson of the organisation. Last year, the summit was held in Libya - but Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi did not take over the chairmanship, which was entrusted to Obasanjo for a second consecutive year.

Mucavele confirmed that nothing has yet been decided about the future chairperson of the AU.