AU leaders fail to choose new top official

A vote to choose a new chairman for the African Union's influential executive Commission ended in deadlock Monday and a new election will be held in June, Zambian President Michael Sata said.

"We went for an election and none of the two candidates emerged as a winner," Sata told reporters, referring to South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma who sought to unseat outgoing chairman Jean Ping from Gabon.

The deputy AU commission chief, Erastus Mwencha from Kenya, will serve as the executive council's chair until a fresh poll, which Sata said would take place in June during the next AU summit in Malawi.

AU sources said Ping held a slender lead in three rounds of voting but that neither candidate secured the required two-thirds majority as the vote proceeded behind closed doors on the second and final day of the AU summit in the Ethiopian capital.

Dlamini-Zuma was then forced under AU rules to pull out, leaving Ping to face a fourth round on his own, but he still failed to muster the necessary votes, sources said.

There had been intense campaigning ahead of the vote, overshadowing the two-day summit on intra-African trade, and the first one since the death of AU founder Moamer Kadhafi last year.

South African delegates broke out into song and dance after the vote, held in the new ultra-modern Chinese-built AU headquarters which were unveiled at the weekend.

"If elected... I pledge to spare no effort in building on the work of those African women and men who want to see an African Union that is a formidable force striving for a united, free, truly independent, better Africa," 63-year-old Dlamini-Zuma had said in a pamphlet distributed at the summit.

South Africa said at the weekend that it was optimistic that Dlamini-Zuma, who was married to President Jacob Zuma until 1998, could defeat Ping.

But sources close to Ping, 69, had said that he was confident of re-election, counting on support from French-speaking West and Central Africa countries.

On Sunday, the 54-member African Union elected Benin's President Thomas Boni Yayi as their new chairman, a rotating post held for one year.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned Sunday that tensions between Sudan and South Sudan -- among the crises the leaders are tackling at their 18th ordinary summit -- threatened regional security.

Ban said both Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his South Sudan counterpart Salva Kiir lacked the "political will" to tackle border and oil disputes since the South seceded last July.

"The situation in Sudan and South Sudan has reached a critical point, it has become a major threat to peace and security across the region," Ban told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

Khartoum and Juba are at loggerheads over pipeline transit fees to transport the South's oil to port in the rump state of Sudan, while on Monday the South accused its former foes of arming gunmen who killed over 40 people in a cattle raid.

Tensions have also risen over the two countries' still undemarcated border -- cutting through oil fields -- as well as allegations by each side that the other backs proxy rebel forces against the other.

"The international community needs to act, and it needs to act now," Ban added. "As long as these issues remain unresolved, tensions will only grow."

The summit is also expected to conclude a deal on bolstering trade between African nations, which currently trade more with the West and China that with themselves.