03 July 2003
Official Comments on Liberia, U.S., Africa Peacekeeping Partnership
(ACOTA emerges during Bush Africa trip briefing) (850)
By Jim Fisher-Thompson
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Briefing the press on President Bush's first trip to
Africa where regional stability and security will be high on the U.S.
agenda, a senior Administration official was unaware of any decision
made by the White House to send U.S. troops to Liberia, a hotspot of
turmoil in West Africa.
The official, speaking on background at the State Department's Foreign
Press Center (FPC) on July 2, briefed foreign journalists on Bush's
July 7-12 visit to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and
Nigeria.
Responding to questions about possible U.S. intervention in Liberia,
where President Charles Taylor is battling rebel forces that have
advanced to the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, the official said,
"I can't confirm or deny that any decision has been reached. ... I
personally have no knowledge of any decision. All I know is what the
President himself said this afternoon at about noon, which was that
he's still considering all options."
While some press reports indicate between 500 and 2,000 U.S. troops
could eventually be sent to Liberia to buttress a U.N./West African
sponsored peacekeeping force, no such announcement was forthcoming
from Bush during a special July 3 pre-trip interview he granted to
several African journalists.
At the FPC briefing the official explained: President Bush "wants to
work with the regional states, the regional leaders, in ECOWAS in
particular, to try to find a solution to the crisis in Liberia. He has
also asked Secretary Powell to work with [U.N. General Secretary] Kofi
Annan to make sure that we're doing all that we can on the diplomatic
front to see that the cease-fire holds between the LURD/MODEL and the
Government forces."
Asked by the Washington File whether the Administration was
considering expanding U.S., African military training partnerships
used in the past to help African nations strengthen their peacekeeping
capabilities, the official said, "Our primary peacekeeping initiative
for Africa is the African Contingency Operations Training and
Assistance (ACOTA) program," which is currently undergoing a
"revamping."
ACOTA, a Defense Department partnership with African militaries aimed
at upgrading their peace-enforcement capabilities follows a similar
program known as the African Crisis and Response Initiative (ACRI),
which focused more on enhancing peacekeeping skills and did not
include weapons training.
Between July 1997 and May 2000, ACRI helped train battalions [between
800-1,000 men] in Senegal, Uganda, Malawi, Mali, Ghana, Benin and Cote
d'Ivoire. As part of the program, the U.S. Defense Department supplied
boots, generators, mine detectors, night vision devices, vehicles and
water purification units to the more than 6,000 troops who underwent
training.
The senior official told journalists, "We looked at ACRI, which was
the initiative we inherited from the Clinton Administration, and we
felt that we needed to beef it up in its substance and training. And
so, we created the ACOTA program. That program is still, I would say,
under development. There is still more room for improvement of the
initiative."
Turning back to the Liberia crisis, the senior official added: "When
President Bush goes to Africa he will talk to the leaders in West
Africa; he will talk to President [Olusegun] Obasanjo and President
[Thabo] Mbeki to think about ways in which we can more effectively
assist the capacity of African countries to carry out peacekeeping
missions, monitoring missions, peace-enforcement missions. And so, we
do see our dialogue on this trip as critical to the evolution of our
peacekeeping" assistance to the continent.
In an interview with the Washington File last November, Theresa
Whelan, Africa director in the Defense Department's Office of
International Security Affairs (ISA), noted that a main difference
between the two programs is that ACOTA is configured to be more
"robust" than ACRI because of its "expanded range" of security
responsibilities and, so, will require weapons training.
ACRI troops were never meant to be put into a non-secure setting,
Whelan explained; whereas the "enforcement" aspect of ACOTA means
troops need to be made ready for "a threat environment."
Another major difference with ACRI is that ACOTA will focus more on
training troops who as trainers themselves will return to their units
and impart their skills to their fellow soldiers.
Emphasizing the "the multiplier effect" in ACOTA, Whelan said, "by
training trainers, we can train a smaller group of soldiers and they,
in turn, go out and train more troops." This is an important factor at
a time when many of the traditional trainers -- members of U.S.
Special Forces units -- are currently busy battling terrorists
worldwide.
Peacekeeping partnerships have been especially popular with the
African diplomatic corps, including Ugandan Ambassador Edith Ssempala,
who told the Washington File in an interview last August that she
welcomed ACOTA as a worthy successor to ACRI.
"You cannot have stability," Ambassador Ssempala said, "unless you
have a professional, trained army. So, any help -- even to countries
involved in conflicts now" -- is an important contribution to peace on
the continent.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)
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