EU to hear African recovery plan

South African President Thabo Mbeki is expected to join fellow African leaders in Brussels on Wednesday where they are due to hold talks with European Union (EU) officials on an economic recovery programme for the continent, AFP reported. Officials said the meeting on the New African Initiative would also be attended by presidents Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria.

For the EU, Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, EU President Romano Prodi and the EU representative for foreign affairs, Xavier Solana, will take part, an official statement said. The New African Initiative to be discussed is an economic programme adopted in July by the last summit of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), the 53-member pan-African body that in the course of a year is to be transformed into the renamed African Union.

The plan combined schemes drawn up by Mbeki, Wade, Obasanjo and Bouteflika aimed at boosting African economies and laying the groundwork for sustainable development in a free-market world where the continent has long been marginalised in terms of trade and growth. The leaders in Brussels will "present details of the New African Initiative, particularly on implementing it," the statement issued in the Senegalese capital Dakar said.