AU sets up anti-terror panel
2004-07-08 18:29
Addis Ababa - The 53-member African Union (AU) will create a centre for research into the causes of terrorism, which will open in Algiers in October, an Algerian official said here on Thursday.
African Union leaders gathered at a summit meeting in the Ethiopian capital "decided to create an African centre studying and researching terrorism", said Abdelkader Messahel, the Algerian minister for African and Maghreb affairs.
The centre will be staffed by some 20 experts and financed by the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.
"Africa is very sensitive to questions of terrorism and must face up to it," said Messahel.
Countries like Niger and Mauritania, as well as Kenya and Tanzania feel particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks, he added.
Muslim extremists linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in 1998 attacked the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and in 2002 bin Laden's group also claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on an Israeli-owned hotel near Kenya's Indian Ocean resort of Mombasa.
East Africa is geographically close to extremist groups operating from the Arabian peninsula.
- SAPA