Sudan is an active member of all pertinent African organizations and is a charter member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), established in 1963 and headquartered in Addis Ababa. During most of its time as a member of the OAU, it used its membership to keep the OAU out of the civil war. Even so, in 1994, the OAU mandated that negotiations toward ending the civil war be undertaken. Sudan consistently made its presence known in the OAU and continued to do so in its successor forum, the African Union (AU), created in 2002. In contrast to its policy of keeping the OAU out of the war in the South, Sudan accepted 8,000 AU troops in troubled Darfur (see War in Darfur), concluding that it was preferable to have an AU peacekeeping mission than one from the United Nations. However, Sudan both limited the number of AU troops and confined their role to monitoring the situation rather than engaging in more proactive peacekeeping. In mid-2007, al-Bashir finally agreed to allow UN forces to join AU peacekeeping operations in Darfur. The crisis in Darfur prevented Sudan from taking its turn in 2006 to assume the chairmanship of the AU; most AU members wanted Sudan to make more progress in ending the Darfur conflict. Subsequent indictment by the International Criminal Court further complicated al-Bashir’s situation, and the AU continued to pass over his name in selecting a chairman.