ECOWAS parliament to discuss regional security

The parliament of the Economic Community of West African States opened its second session in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Tuesday, with security and economic matters top of the agenda. Apart from security and economic issues, the parliamentary session will focus on other "current, urgent and topical issues affecting the lives of the citizens of member states", according to an ECOWAS statement received by IRIN. The parliament is scheduled to sit in plenary for the first two days, break into committee sessions for one week and conclude with another two-day plenary to consider and adopt resolutions, according to a programme released by the ECOWAS secretariat. Speaker of Parliament, Nouhroum Diallo of Mali, declared the session open on Tuesday, as observers included representatives of the International Parliamentary Union, national parliaments from within the region and the World Bank. ECOWAS was founded in 1975 with the aim of fostering economic integration in West Africa but, in the last decade, the 15-nation body has been preoccupied with regional conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both of these countries, troops from the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) were active in ending bloody civil wars.