May 8, 2001
Military leaders from southern Africa met in Tanzania on Tuesday as part of French efforts to boost Africa's ability to provide peacekeeping troops for wars in the continent. The French-led Reinforcement of Africa's Capacity to Keep the Peace (RECAMP) initiative aims to promote peacekeeping organized within Africa, with outside support on training, technical back-up, transport, equipment and funding.
Military exercises have already been held in West Africa and Gabon in recent years, but this week's meeting aims to extend the project into the southern region for the first time. "There is a general consensus that African countries have to take care of their own problems," French Rear-Admiral Raymond Masson told Reuters.
The three-day meeting will be attended by army, navy and air force officers from the 14-member Southern African Development Community, as well as neighboring Kenya and the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. Uganda and Rwanda were not invited because of their 1998 invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, French officials said.
The meeting aims to pave the way for a general staff exercise in October and full military exercises in Tanzania next February for a peacekeeping battalion of 800 troops drawn from the 16 participating countries. The decision to hold the exercises in an Anglophone country for the first time is widely seen as part of France's efforts to extend its military presence and influence outside its former colonies.
"This underlines the new French policy to extend peace-support to the whole of Africa, not just Francophone Africa," Masson said. "We want to help African countries organize themselves on a sub-regional basis."
RECAMP also aims to integrate humanitarian support with peacekeeping efforts, and is supported by around 20 donor nations from most European Union states, the United States, Canada, Russia, China, India, Japan and Argentina.
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