US President George Bush launched a five-nation tour of Africa on Tuesday, with his deliberations over whether to send troops to Liberia overshadowing his drive to combat Aids, poverty and terrorism.
Bush touched down in Senegal after an overnight flight from Washington, and was due to make a penitent journey to Goree island, where more than a million African slaves boarded ships for a life of bondage in the United States.
After talks with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and leaders of other west African democracies, Bush was due to fly to South Africa on the next leg of a tour which will also take him to Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria.
But many eyes in his party were on Tuesday cast eastwards, towards the deepening crisis in Liberia.
Bush left Washington without announcing whether he would bow to pressure and send US troops to join a west African peacekeeping force in Liberia.
Liberia’s agony, which has seen bodies dumped outside the US embassy in Monrovia, has put Bush on the spot, as he has spent the last week saying he wants his visit to show rich America cares about Africa’s misery.
Officials in Washington said on Monday they were willing to join West African states in the force, but have yet to say how.
”The United States is willing to participate with them in that effort to bring stability and peace to the people of Liberia,” State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said.
Bush was reportedly weighing a force of 500 to 2 000 US troops to help enforce a ceasefire in a brutal civil war which has sparked a humanitarian crisis and fuelled fears of instability outside Liberia’s borders.
But Taylor, whom Bush has said must leave the country, said in an interview in Tuesday’s New York Times that he would stay around until a peacekeeping force was up and running.
”If we high-tailed out of here without an international force, don’t you think there would be a free-for-all?” said Taylor, who is wanted on war crimes charges.
Bush chose to kick off his tour in mainly Muslim Senegal to highlight what aides called a success story in a continent ravaged by poverty, war and disease rarely at the top of the West’s foreign policy agenda.
But following the September 11 attacks, the US leader, who foreswore nation building during his election campaign, has come to see the danger that anarchic ”failed” states on the continent could become breeding grounds for terrorism.
His tour is designed to highlight a $15-billion anti-Aids plan and new African economic development initiatives which offer African states assistance in return for economic and political reform.
Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s African American national security advisor said Bush would on Tuesday reveal he feels a special obligation to Africa at Goree island, four kilometres off Senegal.
”Slavery was, of course, America’s birth defect,” Rice said last week.
”We’ve been trying to deal with the consequences of it ever since and to bring about reconciliation. The president on Goree Island is going to have a chance to talk about that experience.”
Some observers have noted that a show of respect in Goree may provide Bush with a political payoff with African American and centrist votes, as he contemplates his reelection bid next year.
Bush told African reporters before leaving Washington that he looked forward to meeting Wade on his ”home turf.”
”I admire him, I admire his leadership. He is a man who believes in the same principles I believe in.”
Senegal, which has shown signs of loosening its ties to former colonial master France and leaning closer to the United States, is seen as a model of development in Washington, since a peaceful transition to democracy in 2000.
Police here launched a wide security sweep ahead of Bush’s arrival, and arrested more than 1 000 people in conjunction with US security agents spearheading the operation to protect Bush.
Hours before Bush’s arrival in Senegal, a group of some 40 intellectuals and political activists mounted a street protest in Dakar denouncing the US leader, notably for his government’s policies on the newly-created International Criminal Court. – Sapa-AFP