The new African Union on Saturday adopted a new plan to curb terrorism after four days of talks in the Algerian capital.
Algeria’s African affairs minister Abdelkader Messahel said the plan contained ”concrete measures” on policing, border controls, judicial measures, terrorism financing, and information exchange at regional, continental and international levels.
It will be submitted to various AU bodies before it is applied, he said.
On Thursday, the new pan-African convention against terrorism took effect when Ghana, South Africa and Sudan ratified the treaty, bringing the number of AU members to do so to more than 15 ?? the minimum required for the convention to take effect.
Leaders at the African Union’s first summit, held in South Africa in July, decided to hold the anti-terrorism meeting to raise awareness of the need for African countries to ratify a continental convention on dealing with terrorism, according to an AU document.
Until Thursday, only 13 of the 53 members of the African Union, which replaces the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), had ratified the convention, which was approved at the July 1999 OAU summit in Algiers.
Officials said Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Niger, Tanzania and Uganda would be ready to ratify the treaty in coming days and weeks.
The convention binds signatories to refuse safe haven and assistance to terrorists or their organisations.
The AU, which urged countries to sign up, warning that ”without peace and security” there can never be development, condemned last year’s September 11 attacks in the United States and said it favoured fighting terrorism under the auspices of the United Nations.
The 53 AU members also plan to establish a research centre to investigate the root causes of terrorism.
In the host nation, Algeria, armed Muslim fundamentalist groups have killed an estimated 100 000 people since 1992, and other African nations have also been targeted by terrorist attacks.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was the target in an
assassination bid at the 1995 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
In November 1997, 62 tourists were killed in a terrorist attack in Luxor, southern Egypt.
In August 1998, simultaneous car bomb attacks against the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Kenyan and Tanzanian capitals, killed more than 200 people and injured some 5 000.
These blasts were both blamed on Osama Bin Laden, principal suspect for coordinating last year’s attacks in New York and Washington. – Sapa-AFP