WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-08-31 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[If you will read carefully, that S.African Minister is really referring to US intervention in countries like Zimbabwe. He does not mention names or give reasons, but it seems to have been decided by the 14 SADC countries (which include S.Africa and Zimbabwe), that they will all stand together with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, no matter what!!! Thus from an African point of view – Robert Mugabe and Zimbabwe are not a problem!! Go figure!! But it seems the Americans may move to Nigeria or Kenya. Jan]
SADC – the regional economic and political power bloc – has rejected a US request to base its African Command (Africom) force in the region, defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota said.
But security observers warned that without US support, African Union peacekeeping missions on the continent would collapse.
Lekota said the decision was taken at the recent SADC summit in Lusaka, Zambia, and had been communicated to the American government.
“The idea of United States focus on Africa is not something new… they have always had some kind of overview of the situation there. Nevertheless, SADC adopted the position that they did that from a distance,” Lekota said.
| ‘We have no quarrel with Africom as such but…’ |
US President George Bush last year called for an African Command to be set up that would oversee its military responsibilities on the continent.
But in a new move, the command would also be home to a civilian contingent that would oversee its humanitarian and donor support programmes on the continent.
It has also been argued that creating a distinct Africa command would increase the potential for greater attention on crises such as the conflict in Darfur.
Currently, the operations are being run from Stuttgart, Germany, but the plan was to have the African Command established on the focus continent by October.
Lekota said there was a sense that Africa had to avoid the presence of foreign forces on her soil.
| ‘This is not a military force’ |
There was a general feeling that “a certain influx of armed forces into one or other of the African countries”, might affect relations between sister countries and lead to uneasiness, he said.
This, he said, would not encourage the sense of security being sought by leaders on the continent.
“We have no quarrel with Africom as such but… we wouldn’t want to see new forces on the continent,” Lekota said.
He said this was in fact not only an SADC stance but one the whole continent had adopted.
He acknowledged that while there may be certain countries who did not agree with the position, they would most likely adopt the African Union’s stance.
But Institute for Security Studies analyst Henri Boshoff said that the Americans were already on record as saying that if “SADC don’t want us we will go somewhere else”.
He said Nigeria, Kenya and various other countries had expressed an interest in hosting the Americans.
“This is not a military force; it’s a command centre that brings with it between 800 and 1 000 people which means a certain amount of financial investment into an area,” Boshoff said.