The foreign minister of the Central African Republic (CAR) has turned up at a summit of the African Union in Maputo, although his government was not invited because it seized power by force, diplomatic sources said yesterday.

Karim Meckassoa arrived Thursday for the gathering of heads of state and government, they said.

Meckassoa had obtained authorisation for access to the conference centre where the summit is being held in the capital of the west African state of Mozambique.

But the CAR foreign minister was not sitting in on conference sessions, the sources said.

The Central African Republic was the scene of a military coup in March in which former CAR president Ange-Felix Patasse was overthrown by General Francois Bozize.

The African Union, set up last year along the lines of the European Union, did not invite the new CAR government because the new pan-African body refuses to recognise heads of state who have seized power by force.

South African President Thabo Mbeki, the AU's outgoing president, said last week on his African National Congress's "ANC Today" web site that the CAR seat would be empty.

"The Central African Republic will not be represented at the Maputo Assembly, given that the present government came about as a result of the military overthrow of the democratically elected government led by President Ange-Felix Patasse," Mbeki said.

The summit yesterday discussed the make-up of its new executive commission, modelled on the EU Commission in Brussels.

Former Mali head of state Alpha Oumar Konare was Thursday elected Commission chairman with Rwanda's ex-president Patrick Mazimhaka as his deputy.

Some 40 heads of state and prime ministers were attending the summit, but leaders of some of Africa's most volatile countries were absent, including Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila and embattled Liberian President Charles Taylor, who has accepted an asylum offer from Nigeria to end more than a decade of almost incessant conflict in his country.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), an economic and social programme promising good governance in exchange for more aid and trade opportunities from the industrialised world, was also high on the summit agenda. - Sapa-AFP.