Leaders commit to CAR

2005-06-30 14:34

Malabo - Leaders of a six-member Central African grouping agreed to extend by six months the mandate of a multinational force deployed in Central African Republic (CAR), a statement issued late on Wednesday said.

The decision came at a summit of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (Cemac) aimed at breathing new life into the five-year-old organisation but attended by only three heads of state.

Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema hosted the gathering, attended by his CAR counterpart Francois Bozize, Gabon's Omar Bongo, Chad's Prime Minister Pascal Yoadimnadji and other ministers from Cameroon and Congo Republic.

The agenda included the future of the 380-man force of troops drawn from Chad, Congo and Gabon, with logistical support from France, deployed at the end of 2002 to protect the CAR's then embattled president, Ange-Felix Patasse.

Its mandate changed with Patasse's overthrow by Bozize in the following year, to monitoring a period of transition that ended in May with Bozize's victory in presidential elections.

Mandate extended

The statement said the force's mandate would be extended for a further six months, that could be renewed, "in order to consolidate the normalisation of the situation after the recent democratic elections".

Also discussed was the failure to put into effect the agreements governing Cemac, which was set up in Malabo in June 1999 under a treaty signed in Chad five years later, as the successor to a regional customs union known as Udeac.

Nguema suggested a total review of the various texts to bring them up to date, and it was agreed to commission a general audit of the community's institutions from outside experts.

The six leaders also called on ministers to begin notifying other countries of the implementation of a common passport for the six states which should have been issued from April 2003.

Cemac's members all belong to a wider grouping, the 11-strong Economic Community of Central African States which is also no nearer achieving the target of regional integration set when it was founded more than 20 years ago.

- AFP