EU might resume Togo aid

2005-07-12 13:50

Lome - European Union (EU) officials were on Tuesday in Togo on the first full day of a visit aimed at discussing the resumption of EU aid to the West African state suspended for over a decade for democratic deficiencies.

The visit comes under an arrangement signed in April of last year between Brussels and Lome that required Togo to firm up its democratic practices and take steps towards parliamentary elections.

The tiny country was upended in February with the sudden death of veteran strongman Gnassingbe Eyadema, which unleashed a constitutional crisis resolved in a violence-charged election in April of his son, Faure Gnassingbe.

EU aid was suspended to Togo in 1993 after a wave of violence choked the democratic process completely under Eyadema, who ruled the country with an iron first for nearly four decades.

He had, however, made overtures to the EU in the year before his death, sending his prime minister to sign the 22-point agreement that has, since November 2004, partially normalised bilateral ties.

One of the first acts by new Prime Minister Edem Kodjo was a visit in June to Brussels to reassure the EU, which noted "massive fraud" in Gnassingbe's election, of Togo's commitment to democratic reform.

The EU mission, which opened on Monday and will run until July 17, will include consultations with the Gnassingbe government and civil society, mission spokesperson Anna Silvia Piergrossi said on national television after a meeting with Kodjo.

- AFP