He was speaking on the sidelines of an African Union summit in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, where heads of state from 55 member nations will meet from Sunday.

“This is a moment in which a wind of hope is blowing across Africa. We have seen reconciliation between Ethiopia and Eritrea, we have seen peace agreements… in South Sudan and CAR (Central African Republic)”, said Guterres.

“We’re working together to see if we can move the same direction in Libya. We have seen elections in Madagascar, DRC and Mali that people were forecasting will lead to tragedy and violence and in the end took place in a peaceful context,” he added.

Ethiopia and Eritrea last year ended a two-decade long cold war, while South Sudan is trying to implement the latest in a long line of peace deals to end a bloody five-year conflict.

The Central African Republic this week reached a peace deal between the government and 14 militia groups, boosting hopes of an end of a crisis that has gripped the country since 2012, sparking conflict that left thousands dead and over a million displaced.

“All these circumstances were realized through the combination of efforts of the UN and AU… to make sure guns will be silent from 2020 onwards on the African continent,” said Guterres.

“I believe Africa is becoming an example where it is possible to solve conflicts and prevent conflicts and I hope this wind of hope can be extended to other parts of the world.”

With pressure mounting in Washington and Riyadh, the US president theoretically had until the end of the day to designate those responsible for the murder of the Washington Post columnist, who was strangled and dismembered by Saudi agents in the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul on October 2.

The time limit was imposed by Democratic and Republican senators, who wrote to the president on October 10 calling for an investigation into the killing.

Under a human rights accountability law the letter gives the president 120 days to designate and punish those responsible. But no definitive action was expected Friday from the administration.

“Consistent with the previous administration’s position and the constitutional separation of powers, the president maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” a senior administration official said.

“The US Government will continue to consult with Congress and work to hold accountable those responsible for Jamal Khashoggi’s killing.”

The State Department said Thursday Washington had already taken action, pointing to last year’s revocation of visas for nearly two dozen Saudi officials and the freezing of assets of 17 others.

Some members of Congress have publicly stated that they suspect the powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was directly responsible for the killing, based on the CIA’s conclusions.

Predicting little movement, a bipartisan group of senators on Thursday proposed a bill that would cut off some weapons sales and require sanctions against any Saudis involved in Khashoggi’s killing.

“Seeing as the Trump administration has no intention of insisting on full accountability for Mr. Khashoggi’s murderers, it is time for Congress to step in and impose real consequences to fundamentally re-examine our relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and with the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen,” said Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Trump administration claims it has no compelling evidence of the direct involvement of the young and powerful Saudi leader, although the senators — briefed in private by intelligence leaders — stressed they remained convinced that the prince known as “MBS” was responsible.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised Khashoggi’s killing among other issues during a meeting in Washington Thursday with Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, according to the State Department.

Al-Jubeir reiterated Friday that the prince was not involved in the murder and blaming him would be crossing a “red line.”

“For anyone to think that they can dictate what we should do, what our leadership should do, is preposterous,” al-Jubeir told reporters.

New revelations

Trump has publicly said he is not concerned whether Prince Mohammed was involved, arguing that the Saudi alliance benefits Washington due to the kingdom’s purchases of weapons and its hostility to regional rival Iran.

The deadline coincides with new embarrassing developments for the prince.

The New York Times, citing officials who had seen US intelligence, said Prince Mohammed had warned in an intercepted conversation with an aide in 2017 that he would go after Khashoggi “with a bullet” if he did not return to Saudi Arabia from the United States.

US intelligence understood that the ambitious 33-year-old heir apparent was ready to kill the journalist, although he may not have literally meant to shoot him, according to the newspaper.

Special UN rapporteur Agnes Callamard said Thursday after a visit to Turkey that the killing of Khashoggi, who had written critical pieces on Saudi Arabia in the Post, had been “planned and perpetrated” by Saudi officials.

In light of the revelations, Khashoggi’s Turkish fiancee said Friday she hoped pressure from US lawmakers would encourage the Trump adminstration to take a tougher stance on the killing.

Speaking at a news conference in Istanbul, Hatice Cengiz left the door open to a meeting with Trump if certain conditions were met, a softening of her position in December when she rejected an invitation from the US president.

“A visit to the United States could take place in March,” Cengiz said, adding she hoped Trump would have a change of “attitude” about the murder.

Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax is next in line for the governorship if Governor Ralph Northam — who faces intense pressure to resign over a racist yearbook photo — decides to step down.

The Washington Post reported that a Maryland woman accused Fairfax of a “premeditated and aggressive” attack when the two were undergraduate students at Duke University in 2000, while CNN said the woman had accused Fairfax of rape.

The allegation comes after another woman accused Fairfax of misconduct over a sexual encounter they had in a hotel room 15 years ago, one that he insists was “100 percent consensual”.

Fairfax, a 39-year-old Democrat, won election in November alongside Northam, who has been fighting for his political survival since a 1984 yearbook surfaced that features a racist photo on a page dedicated to him.

After initially saying he was in the photo — which pictures one man in blackface next to another wearing a Klu Klux Klan robe and hood — Northam now denies appearing in the image, and has so far declined calls to step down.

The body of Ori Ansbaher, 19, was found on Thursday evening in the south of Jerusalem, and she was buried on Friday in the Israeli settlement of Tekoa.

The suspect comes from the flashpoint city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank, police said.

All other details of the woman’s killing remain the subject of an Israeli gag order.

Previous Israeli statements about her murder came only from top diplomats and politicians.

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, accused the UN Security Council of staying silent in the face of what he charged was the complicity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) of president Mahmud Abbas in such attacks.

“The PA maintains its policy of paying salaries for terrorists and educating its youth with incitement, and a 19-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Israel,” he said.

“The Security Council has the responsibility and moral duty to make a clear condemnation of this barbaric murder and to act firmly against the culture of terror in the Palestinian Authority.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed in a statement on Friday evening that “the security forces will track down those responsible for this killing and we will treat them with the full force of the law.”

Netanyahu’s principal challenger in an April 9 general election, former armed forces chief of staff Benny Gantz, said he had full confidence in the ability of the security forces to arrest the killer.

The West Bank was hit by a bout of unrest in December as tensions eased in the Gaza Strip. but they later eased in the West Bank too.

The future of the West Bank is set to be one of the main issues of the Israeli election campaign.

Gantz, who is running on a centre-right ticket, has hinted that he may be ready to pull back from the territory as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are campaigning for the unilateral annexation of large swathes of the Palestinian territory.

Some 650,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, including annexed east Jerusalem.

The settlements are seen as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to peace, as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.

Cairo’s tenure “will probably concentrate on security and peacekeeping”, said Ashraf Swelam, who heads a think tank linked to the country’s foreign ministry.

Incoming AU chair President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will likely focus less on “financial and administrative reform” than his predecessor, Swelam added.

Such reform was the cornerstone of outgoing AU chairman Paul Kagame’s year in the role.

The Rwandan president has pushed for a continent-wide import tax to fund the AU and reduce its dependence on external donors, who still pay for more than half the institution’s annual budget.

An African diplomat told AFP that Egypt — along with fellow heavyweights South Africa and Nigeria — does not want a powerful AU.

This diplomat, who has been tracking AU affairs for over a decade, said Cairo has “never forgotten” its suspension in 2013.

The near year-long lock out from the AU came after Egypt’s army deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, who in 2012 had become the country’s first democratically elected president.

Sisi is due to take the helm at the AU’s biannual heads of state assembly, which takes place on February 10 and 11 at the AU’s gleaming headquarters in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

As usual, the continent’s multiple security crises will be high on the VIPs’ agenda.

Rwanda’s ambitious funding proposal will also likely be on the table.

But it has met resistance not only from Egypt, but other member states, so may fail to pass.

Reform of the AU Commission is an even more sensitive topic. In November 2018, most states rejected a proposal to give the head of the AU’s executive organ the power to name deputies and commissioners.

Egypt backs free trade zone

But the Egyptians are “fully engaged” in pushing other AU reforms, according to an AU official.

One key initiative backed by Cairo is the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), an initiative agreed by 44 of 55 member states in March 2018.

The single market is a flagship of the AU’s “Agenda 2063” programme, conceived as a strategic framework for socioeconomic transformation.

However, the trade pact has met resistance from South Africa.

Sisi will therefore need to push hard for ratification of this accord, if it is to come into effect.

For Elissa Jobson, head of Africa advocacy at the International Crisis Group, Sisi can be expected to “use the presidency to increase his country’s standing among other African states”.

“This is not a departure from previous administrations”, particularly that of the outgoing chairman, she added.

“Kagame showed that the presidency — for a long time considered to be merely a figurehead — can be used to promote national interests and boost a leader’s international profile,” Jobson said.

The AU official — who requested anonymity — said Rwanda’s president will remain a point person for the organisation’s broad reform agenda, despite handing over the chair.

Limited power

But there are major limits to the power wielded by the post of AU chairman.

Kagame suffered a crushing disavowal by the AU after expressing “serious doubts” about the results of Democratic Republic of Congo’s recent presidential election, which was officially won by Felix Tshisekedi.

While also disputed by the Catholic church, the results were validated by DRC’s constitutional court and saluted by continental heavyweights South Africa, Kenya and Egypt.

For Liesl Louw-Vaudran at the Institute of Security Studies, Sisi wants Egypt to be considered part of Africa, not just the Arab world — but that will require work.

“North African countries have a reputation of looking in a different direction than Africa, and Egypt will have to overcome that stereotype,” she said.

The AU’s theme for this summit is “Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons” presented within a security context.

Cairo is casting itself as a champion in the battle against illegal immigration — and as a model for hosting refugees on its soil.