The Accra summit is the AU's ninth in five years
The African Union summit has opened in Accra, Ghana, focusing this year on the idea of a pan-African government.
Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is championing the idea, but correspondents say many African leaders do not support his initiative.
There are fears the issue will push the crises in Zimbabwe, Somalia and Darfur off the agenda.
Foreign ministers meeting on the eve of the summit heard critical reports on the way the AU handles money.
A report by the international auditing firm Ernst and Young found that the African Union could not account for almost $3m it spent on a conference for African intellectuals.
The firm also said the AU could not verify how much it paid members of the Pan-African Parliament, an AU body.
Another report, by AU financial experts, showed that only seven of the 53 member states were up-to-date with their payments to the AU.
This summit is the ninth since the AU was created five years ago.
"For Africa, the matter is to be or not to be," President Gaddafi told students at the University of Ghana on the eve of the summit.
"My vision is to wake up the African leaders to unify our continent," he said, describing himself as a "soldier for Africa".
The idea of a single pan-African government was first promoted by Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence in 1957, and the Libyan leader has long been an enthusiastic proponent of the idea.
President Gaddafi arrived in Ghana after a week-long tour of West Africa, during he visited Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Liberia.
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