By Milton Olupot

PREPARATIONS to host the African Union (AU) summit due next month are in advanced stages, foreign affairs minister Sam Kutesa has said.

He said the AU commissioner, Jean Ping, was expected in the country to assess the preparations for the 15th assembly of African heads of state and government meeting.

Uganda was endorsed to host the 2010 summit during the 11th AU meeting that took place in Egypt in July 2008.

The theme of the summit will be “Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa”.

The theme for the summit was developed from one of the millennium development goals, which the African Union wants to achieve.

Other areas to be covered during the summit include peace and security, infrastructure, energy, agriculture and food security.

Kutesa added that everything had been set for the review conference of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) scheduled for May 31 to June 11.

“We are ready to receive our visitors,” the minister told journalists at his office in Kampala on Friday.

The conference, which will be opened by the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, at Munyonyo Commonwealth Resort, will discuss the crime of aggression.

The conference is expected to review the state of international justice and consider amendments to the ICC founding treaty, with a view to strengthening it.

It will also review the list of crimes within the ICC jurisdiction and add drug trafficking and terrorism.

The Parliament recently passed the ICC Bill, after a six-year consultative process.

Uganda joins a few African countries that have domesticated the Rome Statute.