USA CREATES UNIFIED COMMAND POST IN AFRICA

MISNA AFRICA, ON LADYSILVIA: The US secretary of defense, Robert Gates, announced that the US has established a unified command post for Africa.

Until now, military responsibilities in Africa were shared among three regional departments: Horn of Africa, which had been assigned to the Miilde East command center (Centcom), Madagascar under the responsibility for the Pacific, while the rest of the continent was controlled by the US command in Europe. In early January, the government of Algiers had rejected the US proposal to house the Africa General Command (Africom), rumored in recent months.

According to an Algerian daily, the refusal was part of the policy not to host foreign fighting forces in its territory. The US are said, then, to have considered placing the c enter in Mali or Niger, which have already been involved in a multi-year program of US military aid in West Africa. For the past few years, the current administration in Washington has been conducting military operations in various regions from the Middle East " justified under the guise of the ’war on terror’.

The US expects to increase its sourcing of oil from Africa in the next few years, especially in the area of the Gulf of Guinea, where there have been intensified military activities , including joint operations. [AB]