Africa says security body’s success hinges on cash
By Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA, May 25 (Reuters) – African leaders pledged on Tuesday to use a new U.N.-style security body to quell Africa’s many wars but warned the eventual success of the European-funded venture depended on the continent’s readiness to pay its costs.
The inaugural meeting of the African Union’s U.N.-style Peace and Security Council (PSC) urged that dialogue replace war or sabre-rattling among current or former foes in Sudan, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia and Eritrea.
“Where grave abuses of human rights, crime against humanity and genocide occur, the Peace and Security Council will take swift action,” Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo told the first gathering of heads of state of the 15-member council.
African leaders are keen to avoid a repeat of mass killings such as the 1994 Rwanda genocide, when extremists from the Hutu majority slaughtered 800,000 minority Tutsis and Hutu moderates.
With fragile peace efforts going on in Africa’s many trouble spots, the AU has come under international pressure to take a lead in peacekeeping, but is struggling to find money in African coffers for a 15,000-strong AU peacekeeping force.
Money for the PSC’s so-called African Standby Force has so far come mainly from the European Union, which has provided 250 million euros ($300 million) for AU conflict prevention.
Alpha Oumar Konare, chairman of the AU executive commission, indicated that the force’s long-term future depended on would-be African peacemakers backing their fine words with money.
“Africa must demonstrate its political will to free the AU Peace and Security Council from the crushing external dependence”,” he said, referring to the EU’s support.
The 53-member AU has trumpeted the relative success of its peace efforts in the DRC and the Indian Ocean Comoros islands and points to a breakthrough at Kenyan-chaired peace talks this week between Sudan’s government and southern rebels.
QUESTIONS OVER SUDAN’S DARFUR REGION
But wars old and new continue to ravage the continent, notably in Sudan’s western Darfur region, where an estimated 30,000 people have been killed in over a year of conflict.
Konare said the AU needed to know the root cause of the Darfur crisis. “We need to know the truth about what transpired and what is happening in this region of the Sudan,” he said..
Rebels took up arms in Darfur in February last year, accusing the government of neglecting the poor area and arming Arab militias to loot and burn the villages of ethnic Africans. Khartoum denies the charge, saying the militias are outlaws.
Konare also said there was an urgent need to find a peaceful solution to a simmering border row between Ethiopia and Eritrea, who fought a devastating frontier war in 1998-2000.
The 15-member council, modelled on the U.N. Security Council and operational since January, is charged with the prevention, resolution and management of conflicts.
The multinational African Standby Force intervene unilaterally in the event of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, and serious threats to “legitimate order”.
The council comprises two groups – one of countries elected for three-year terms — Gabon, Ethiopia, Algeria, South Africa and Nigeria — the other of countries elected for two-year terms — Cameroon, DRC, Kenya, Sudan, Libya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Ghana, Senegal and Togo.