By Pascal Fletcher

ACCRA, June 30 (Reuters) - African leaders should throw open national borders to allow a free flow of people and trade that would unleash the potential of a United States of Africa, rights groups from the continent said on Saturday.

On the eve of an African Union summit in Accra, Ghana, around 100 organisations from across the continent appealed to the gathering heads of state to accelerate the construction of a more integrated Africa with its own continental government.

They called for the removal of visa requirements between Africa's more than 50 states and the lifting of commercial barriers in the world's poorest continent, whose trade and transport links lag far behind other parts of the world.

"Without continental citizenship, continental government is meaningless," the groups said in a statement which expressed enthusiastic support for a proposal, to be debated at the summit, to create a continental government.

They also urged African leaders to study introducing direct elections across the continent from 2009 onwards to appoint members of a legislating African parliament that would truly represent Africa's nearly 1 billion people.

The existing Pan-African Parliament in South Africa is composed of representatives of national assembles and parliaments from individual states and is largely advisory.

"The borders that constitute us into African states were arbitrarily drawn by some white men, some under the heavy influence of whisky," Brian Kagoro, Pan Africa programme director of Action Aid International, told reporters.

He was referring to the historical "carving up" of Africa by European colonial powers that took place at the end of the 19th century, giving the continent its current web of borders.

Kagoro and other civil society representatives said that in its existing "defederated state", Africa could never compete as an equal with other major economic blocs and powers, despite its vast resources of oil, mineral and human capital.

"Inter-African trade is still criminalised. Those brave souls who trade across borders are branded as smugglers," said political scientist Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, who is general secretary of the Global Pan-African Movement.

FAST OR SLOW?

As heads of state and government began arriving in Accra for the summit starting on Sunday, most of the 53 AU members appeared to favour a gradual, step-by-step creation of a United States of Africa.

This was in spite of noisy calls from a few leaders for a continental government to be established right away.

Libya's flamboyant leader Muammar Gaddafi has travelled to the summit by land, lobbying West African states along the way to back his vision for the immediate creation of a continent-wide African government, army, currency and passport.

Other countries were more cautious.

"When you build a house you should start with the foundation, not the roof," Zambian Foreign Minister Mundia Sikatana told Reuters. "We are telling him, as we say in one of our African languages 'polepole' (Swahili for 'slowly')."

Rights activists said disagreements over timing should not distract the heads of state from achieving a powerful united Africa, championed half a century ago by Ghana's first post-independence leader, Kwame Nkrumah.

"African people have made a decision that a unity government is the goal," Abdul-Raheem said.

Kagoro said that if the African leaders failed to act decisively now on a continental level, "in 200 years time we'll still be trying to unite the tribes of Kenya alone".

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