The African Union urged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to respond to mass protests with reforms as its leaders met Sunday to tackle the array of crises gripping the continent.
More than 20 leaders gathered at the bloc's headquarters in Ethiopia for a summit dominated by the turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia, the political crisis in Ivory Coast and controversy over the designation of Equatorial Guinea's iron-fisted President Teodoro Obiang Nguema as the African Union's new chairman.
As deadly anti-government protests in Egypt raged into a sixth day, AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra called on Mubarak to bring in reforms in response to the unrest.
"We believe that there are changes that are necessary in order to respond to the wishes of the people, economic reforms, social measures, and probably also issues related to the government that need to be addressed," Lamamra said.
In contrast, Lamamra said that Tunisia was "moving in a direction which seems to reflect the wishes of the people" after a popular uprising there ended the 23-year rule of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali earlier this month.
At the summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for "restraint, non-violence and respect of fundamental rights and freedoms and human rights" during the protests in Egypt, which have so far claimed more than 100 lives.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who also attended the Addis Ababa summit, called on African leaders to draw lessons from the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt and to anticipate public desire for change.
Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday challenged the United Nations to reform its powerful Security Council this year to include one or more permanent African members. "I have long been convinced that Africa does not have the place it deserves in world governance," the French leader said in an address to African Union leaders here. "Carry out the reform of the (UN) Security Council as early as this year," Sarkozy told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Joseph Deiss, the president of the UN General Assembly who were both attending the AU summit.
The summit was also considering a new proposal to set up a five-member heads-of-state panel to seek a solution to the political crisis in Ivory Coast.
The west African country is locked in a leadership wrangle between incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo and rival Alassane Ouattara, the internationally recognised winner of disputed November 28 polls.
Ban warned the summit that a recount of the disputed polls, as earlier demanded by Gbagbo and backed by some African leaders, would be a "grave injustice and set an unfortunate precedent."
The summit saw Equatorial Guinea's Obiang designated as the bloc's new chairman - a controversial move considering criticism from rights groups of his authoritarian rule over the central African nation since taking power in a coup in 1979.
In his acceptance speech, Obiang said: "The concept of democracy, human rights and good governance are not new to Africa, but they should be adapted to the African culture."
Human Rights Watch spokesman Reed Brody said the appointment reflected badly on the bloc. "The vast majority of wealth in Equatorial Guinea is being used to support President Obiang and his family while most of the country lives in extreme poverty," Brody told.