Army aid ban ‘obsolete’, says Africa envoy

By David Cronin

Date: 28/04/05

The EU envoy to Africa's Great Lakes region has described rules on development aid as "obsolete", complaining at how it cannot be used to train armies in conflict-riven countries.

Aldo Ajello argued that a professional army would be vital in Congo if the country was to achieve lasting stability after the upheaval brought by the civil war that began in August 1998 and, according to some estimates, has cost almost four million lives.

"Up to now, we have been development and humanitarian support-oriented," he told European Voice. "We have been very reluctant to finance anything that has a military application. That approach is obsolete today. To continue with that approach would be a major risk as there can be no development without security and stability."

The situation with the current Congolese army is "unacceptable", he added. "They are badly trained, badly equipped, not fed and not paid. In order to survive, they must harass the civilian population. People look at them as the enemy."

Louis Michel, the European commissioner for development and humanitarian affairs, has indicated recently that he would be in favour of allocating EU aid to improving the Congolese armed forces. Yet providing aid to military bodies would not meet the criteria for development assistance set by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Anti-poverty campaigners have argued that any aid for security initiatives should not come from money earmarked for traditional development assistance, fearing that health and education projects could suffer if it did.

But Ajello called for the OECD criteria to be revised. "Of course, there should be a number of guarantees to avoid abuse but we should not keep having a dogmatic approach."

In the 1990s, the Italian diplomat was an adviser on peacekeeping to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, then the UN secretary-general. Pointing out that the daily cost of the UN's peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUC) is €2.3 million, he said that training domestic security forces would be essential for devising an exit strategy for MONUC.

For the time being, however, he believes that MONUC should be expanded from its current operations in Ituri and Kivu province to Katanga, the southern Congolese region where much fighting has occurred between government troops and various militias.

Ajello and Javier Solana, the Union's high representative for foreign affairs, will leave Brussels tonight (28 April) on a visit to South Africa and Congo.

Their intention, he said, is to encourage the Kinshasha authorities to start voter registration for presidential elections, the first such poll in Congo in four decades. The elections had been scheduled for June but Ajello expects an announcement postponing the poll in the near future. He believes that this will spark some unrest.

An eight-member EU military team is to be sent to Kinshasha to advise on the security steps required for holding the elections. It will follow the deployment of a 30-strong police mission, designed to supervise the division in the Congolese police responsible for protecting national institutions.

Ajello suggested that the EU could continue to play a "major role" in the country by using its €250 million African Peace Facility to help ensure a longer-term security.

The EU Special Representative for the African Great Lakes Region, Aldo Ajello, criticised the EU's rules on development aid which rule out money to be provided to military bodies such as for the training of armies in conflict-riven countries.

Council: Policies: Foreign Policy: EU Special Representatives: Aldo Ajello http://consilium.europa.eu/cms3_fo/showPage.asp?id=457&lang=en

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