'No more US bases in Africa'

2008-02-20 15:11

Accra - United States President George W Bush said on Wednesday that the US had no plans to build new military bases in Africa, amid concerns on the continent about a new Africom command now based in Germany.

"We do not contemplate adding new bases," Bush said, on the second-to-last stop of a five-country Africa swing, during a joint press conference with Ghana President John Kufuor.

"I know there's rumours in Ghana - 'all Bush is coming to do is trying to convince you to put a big military base here.' That's baloney. Or as we say in Texas, 'that's bull,'" Bush said.

"That doesn't mean we won't develop some kind of office somewhere in Africa. We haven't made our minds up. This is a new concept," Bush explained, amid deep suspicion on the continent about the purpose of Africom.

'We've got an issue in Darfur'

Some African critics had tied the project to the fact that, by 2015, Washington expected that 25% of the oil it imported would come from the continent, essentially from the Gulf of Guinea.

Bush rejected the premise: "It is a command structure that is aiming to help provide military assistance to African nations, so African nations are more capable of dealing with Africa's conflicts, like peacekeeping training."

He added: "We've got an issue in Darfur that we've got to all work together to solve, and I'm very pleased that the African Union (AU) and the United Nations hybrid force should be moving in there. I'd like to see it move in quicker."

He said: "I want to dispel the notion that all of a sudden America is, you know, bringing all kinds of military to Africa. It's just simply not true. The whole purpose of Africom is to help leaders deal with African problems."

World's 8th exporter of crude oil

Confronted by a lack of enthusiasm for Africom, Washington had been doing its best to sound reassuring.

At the end of January, US diplomat Geoffrey Martineau told the Nigerian parliament that America did not intend either to put military bases in Africa or to invade the oil-rich Niger Delta.

Nigeria was the world's eighth exporter of crude oil and the fifth supplier to the US. Nigeria had already refused to host Africom and had made known its unwillingness to have it based "anywhere on African soil".

The US government announced early in the year that the Defence Department was creating a US Africa Command headquarters to coordinate all American military and security interests throughout the continent.

The American military involvement in Africa had so far been shared among the US European Command, the US Central Command and the US Pacific Command, and Africom is currently based in Germany, while a continental location is evisaged in the longer term.

- AFP