Paris, 6 December – The African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security, Mr Said Djinnit, on Tuesday called on the European Union to provide the necessary assistance to breathe life into African institutions so that Africa could assume its crisis prevention and peacekeeping responsibilities, while at the same time the Assembly called for the establishment of a “Euro-African Peace and Security Fund”.
 
Addressing the WEU Assembly, Mr Djinnit said he regarded the consolidation of the institutional architecture as the strategic dimension of the partnership between the European Union and the African Union to be finalised with the adoption of the “EU Strategy for Africa” at the European Council on 15 and 16 December. He described Africa as a vast institutional construction area, recalling that there were no democratic institutions in Africa 15 years ago. Now, he said, the word “democracy” is common currency throughout the continent and the African Union has been able to evolve away from a mistaken reliance on the principle of non-interference towards a duty of non-indifference, adding that in his view the application of that principle was the great challenge facing Africa.
 
The African Union is in the process of setting up an early warning system for conflict prevention in coordination with the five African regional organisations, together with a surveillance room and a situation room, still in the embryonic stage, at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa. The African force, the armed wing of the system, is yet to be formed and it is hoped that the proposed five regional brigades, which are to have a common doctrine and training, will be operational by 2010.
 
According to Mr Djinnit, the “Africa Peace Facility” set up by the EU to fund crisis management has revealed the enormous potential of the Euro-African partnership by enabling the AU to take action on the ground. But the AU’s peacekeeping operations in Darfur and Burundi have also, in his view, shown that there are limits to what the continent can do. The Euro-African strategic partnership must, he said, be given real substance. This inevitably raises the question of resources and he considers that the EU has the means to put the necessary financial instruments in place to enable the whole of Africa to assume its crisis prevention and peacekeeping responsibilities.
 
In the course of the same debate, the Assembly adopted the recommendations contained in a report on “Peacekeeping in Sub-Saharan Africa: a practical approach”, submitted by Mr Charles Goerens (Luxembourg, Liberal Group). The Assembly considered that the “Africa Peace Facility” should be replaced by the establishment of a “Euro-African Peace and Security Fund”, identifying sources of funding and enabling better provision to be made for crisis management activities to be funded by the African Union. Mr Goerens also hoped that further consideration would be given to the idea of setting up a joint EU-AU military base in central Africa to promote the training of African forces.
 
Mr Goerens preferred the formula of an “EU-Africa partnership” to that of an “EU strategy for Africa”, pointing out that “our commitment to the notion of African ownership is a hollow one if we do not provide Africans with the means to act for themselves.” In his view, if we fail to give the African Union “the means of tackling the problems of the continent now, we will have a far higher bill, or should I say toll – death toll – to pay tomorrow”.
 
In a separate interview on an international television news programme, Mr Goerens welcomed the success of African mediation in seeking a new prime minister in Côte d’Ivoire, adding that one of his main tasks would be to prepare for elections.