Gaddafi's army on AU agenda

2004-02-25 11:24

Nairobi - Ambitious and ground-breaking plans for a continent-wide defence policy and a permanent military rapid reaction force will be one of the hottest topics at this week's meeting of African presidents in Libya.

These African Union (AU) projects reflect the continent's growing tendency to try to resolve its own security problems rather than relying on the United Nations which did nothing, for example, to halt Rwanda's genocide in 1994.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who likes to be seen as something of an African patriarch, on Monday renewed his call for a much more radical idea: the merging of all national militaries into a single, million-strong African army, saying this would halve the continent's defence expenditure.

While this plan reputedly enjoys just enough support to get on to the Syrte summit agenda, most African countries dismiss it as unworkable or undesirable.

Detailed proposals for an African Standby Force (ASF) and for a Common African Defence and Security Policy (CADSP) have been drawn up and fine-tuned over the last two years at meetings of top army brass and defence ministers.

A prototype AU mission has already been deployed to support the peace process in war-ravaged Burundi.

When fully up and running - a first phase is tentatively scheduled for next year - the standby force will be expected to carry out numerous roles including advising political missions, deploying military observers alongside a UN mission as well as stand-alone peacekeepers, protecting vulnerable civilians, removing landmines and, in extreme circumstances, deploying troops uninvited to an AU member state.

According to an official AU document, one such intervention scenario would be "genocide situations where the international community does not act promptly."

The UN actually scaled down its presence during the Rwandan genocide, which claimed up to a million lives, and the AU's predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), was hamstrung by its stringent policy of not interfering in the internal affairs of other states.

The constitution of the African Union, which replaced the OAU in 2002, provides for multilateral intervention when "grave circumstances" arise in a member state.

"What we are looking for is a standby force that will be... trained for peace-keeping purposes and can be dispatched when the need arises," AU Director of Peace and Security Sam Ibok said in Addis Ababa.

The AU's new doctrine, set out in the CADSP, calls for member states to adopt a collective approach to Africa's defence, treating an attack against one as an attack on the Union, and broadens the definitions of defence and security beyond sovereign states and military matters to include individual citizens and their well-being and the environment.

- AFP