G8 leaders have endorsed a plan to help Africa equip itself with its own peacekeeping and intervention force, a German official at the gathering of the world’s richest nations said on Monday.
At a meeting late into Sunday evening with four African leaders, they agreed that Africa should be able, by 2010, to deploy troops in crisis zones, perhaps at the request of the United Nations or the African Union.
The commitments on the part of the Group of Eight, which build on an agreement in principle at last year’s summit in Canada to help Africa develop its own force, cast it in a technical and financial support role.
Uschi Eid, the German government’s Africa representative, said the G8 was ready to train soldiers up to one brigade strength of 3 000 to 3 500 troops.
The soldiers would be integrated into the armed forces of their own country, but would be rapidly deployable as part of a UN or AU-led peace initiative.
”The G8 will support Africa in developing its military, political and civilian capabilities,” she said, with the aim that African countries ”will be in a position independently to conduct peacekeeping missions.”
Germany will help train civilian operatives to work alongside a mandated peacekeeping force. Eid said the experience of Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo showed how important it was to have civilian elements working beside troops.
Sunday’s meeting was attended by the presidents of four African countries — Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa — and leaders of the world’s seven biggest economies and Russia.
Eid said the G8 would help coordinate training, the establishment of early warning crisis observation centres, organisational structures and partnership arrangements.
”The African vision for its peace and security infrastructure is a work in progress,” according to the action plan.
”In respect of this, G8 and African partners will work, step by step, to develop key building blocks that will help to channel existing resources more effectively in support of a longer-term vision.” – Sapa-AFP