US pledges training assistance to ECOMOG

The United States has promised to help train the Economic Community of West African States' (ECOWAS) regional peace-keeping force, ECOMOG. It has also said it would help ECOWAS set up military bases for the rapid deployment of troops in conflict areas.

ECOWAS said in a statement on Monday that Gen Carlton Fulford, deputy commander of the US European Command, made the pledges during a visit on Saturday to its secretariat in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.

Fulford, who was received by ECOWAS Executive Secretary Mohammed Ibn Chambas, said the first steps in the assistance programme would include the installation of a US $5.3-million early-warning satellite-communications system. The system will link the ECOWAS secretariat with observation centres in Benin, Burkina Faso, The Gambia and Liberia.

The US general said Washington was willing to give the regional body military equipment worth $2 million already in Sierra Leone for it to set up the first of two planned bases. "The United States is also willing to help in sourcing donors who would assist in establishing the second base," the statement quoted Fulford as saying.

Ibn Chambas told the 11-member US military delegation that ECOWAS was planning to set up regional training centres for peacekeepers in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria. A military team from the US, Britain and France was expected in Abuja to discuss these plans with ECOWAS, he said.

Reacting to concerns expressed by Fulford that terrorists might be relocating to Africa in the aftermath of the attack on the 11 September attacks in the United States last year, Ibn Chambas said ECOWAS would cooperate with efforts to eliminate terrorism.