The 15th African Union (AU) Summit officially began on Tuesday in the Ugandan capital of Kampala. High-level delegations and heads of state from 51 African countries are expected to participate in the conference. According to official sources, President Hosni Mubarak is expected to attend the summit. Ugandan Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Patrick Muganda stressed that Mubarak would receive red carpet treatment during his visit. Twenty-nine African leaders have so far confirmed that they would attend the event. Cairo, however, has not yet officially announced Mubarak's participation in the summit. Mubarak has been conspicuously absent from African conferences ever since he was the target of an assassination attempt while attending a summit in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 1995. Since then, he has only participated in an AU summit held in Nigeria in 2000. According to Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister for African Affairs Mona Omar, Egypt has a "defined vision" related to the summit's theme, which is “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa." The Ministry of Health, said Omar, had already prepared a report on the subject. The assistant minister went on to say that Egypt was prepared to assist African countries in improving maternal and child health, pointing to the existence of advanced health care facilities in Egypt, including the Suzanne Mubarak Center for Maternal and Child Health in Alexandria. She said that the Mubarak center offered training to medical staff from countries across Africa on how to lower preventable deaths among mothers and children. Omar added that the Egyptian delegation participating in the conference would offer Egyptian expertise in controlling diseases prevalent in Africa. She noted that a team of Egyptian researchers had devised a way to eliminate the parasite responsible for malaria in its larval stage before it had the chance to be transmitted by mosquitoes. She went on to say that the conference would serve to pave the way for a scheduled Arab League summit to be held in Libya in October, as well as an African-European Summit that will also be hosted by Libya the following month. The summit comes in the wake of twin bomb attacks in Kampala on 12 July that killed 74 people. Ugandan authorities have taken strict security measures aimed at preventing similar attacks during the AU Summit. Translated from the Arabic Edition.
