President Mbeki opens the second sitting of PAP

The South African state president, Thabo Mbeki, opened the second sitting of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) for the first time at its new permanent seat, the Gallagher Estate conference centre in Midrand, Gauteng. The parliament was established in March 2004, by Article 17 of The Constitutive Act of the African Union, as one of the nine Organs provided for in the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community signed in Abuja, Nigeria, in 1991. According to the programme, new members of the Parliament were to be sworn in before the start of the official opening scheduled for around 11am with the arrival of Mbeki and his visiting Indian counterpart Abdul Kalam. R7, 3 million was set a side for an opening bash.