EU to Give EUR55 mln to African Union
Sept 26, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — The European Commission is to provide EUR55 million in aid to the cash-strapped African Union, officials said Tuesday.
In a landmark visit to the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso will sign over the funds to bolster the 53-nation organization, said Tim Clarke, the Commission’s ambassador to Ethiopia.
The Commission’s funds cannot be used for peacekeeping, but can be used to meet running costs of the African bloc.
The move comes as the AU is expanding its peacekeeping operation in war-ravaged Darfur by 4,000 to bring the force in the western Sudan region to 11,000, AU officials said.
The underfunded and ill-equipped AU force has had little success in halting ethnic fighting that has killed at least 200,000 people and chased 2.5 million from their homes since 2003.
The troops to Darfur will be made up of six battalions of 680 men each under plans endorsed by African leaders on the sidelines of meetings at the U.N. in New York last week.
The current 7,000-strong force needs $465 million a year to operate.
European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso is expected to travel to Ethiopia with 12 other commissioners and hold talks Sunday and Monday with AU officials on its Darfur mission and a proposed deployment to Somalia.
Violence in Darfur has been escalating with the U.N. saying 100,000 people have been displaced since May, when the Sudanese army began a large offensive.
Aid groups say continued fighting is making the humanitarian disaster even worse. The war pits Arab militiamen allied with the Arab-dominated national government in Khartoum against ethnic Africans who rebelled after years of low-level fighting over land and water in the arid region.
The AU mission was scheduled to wrap up at the end of September and be replaced by a larger U.N. force, but Sudan’s leaders fiercely opposed such a move and the AU agreed to stay on until at least the end of the year.
(AP/ST)