Africa suddenly front-and-center
July 8, 2003
BY LYNN SWEET Sun-Times Washington Bureau Chief
WASHINGTON--President Bush departed Monday night on a five-country visit to Africa as he weighed sending U.S. troops to Liberia to restore order.
Bush arrives in Africa on a trip designed to work toward several goals: fighting AIDS, boosting national security and encouraging emerging markets.
The president's trip was originally planned for January but was postponed as the attention of the White House increasingly turned to Iraq.
Bush's visit to Africa, his first, comes in a different context than Bill Clinton's two trips because of the Sept. 11 attacks and Iraq.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush said he would not put Africa on his priority list and was not interested in the U.S. military taking on peacekeeping and nation-building responsibilities.
Now the president is considering sending in 2,000 troops to Liberia, the West African nation founded by freed U.S. slaves. He sees wars in Africa and the AIDS scourge as threats to U.S. security in the post-Sept. 11 world.
Bush has worked with Congress to authorize a five-year, $15 billion commitment to fighting AIDS in 14 countries, 12 in Africa. As Bush travels to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria, Congress later this week starts debate over the AIDS appropriations.
Congress authorized spending up to $3 billion for fiscal 2004. The White House, however, only asked for a little over $2 billion for the first year because many of the countries do not have an infrastructure in place to absorb the infusion of cash.
Another goal of the trip is to encourage democracy and prevent terrorists finding harbor in countries run by authoritarian rule.
"We've also recognized since 9/11,'' national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said, "that one wants to be careful about permitting conditions of failed states to create conditions in which there is so much instability that you begin to see greater sources of terrorism.''
Before the trip, Bush announced that he would send $100 million to the East African countries that assisted the U.S. in the war against terror, which has touched the continent. Terrorists have attacked U.S. embassies in Africa and blown up a tourist hotel in Kenya.
The Bush White House, like the Clinton administration, also wants to unlock Africa's economic potential.
Africa is the "world's last emerging market,'' said Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kansteiner.
Africa has some of the world's largest untapped oil reserves. Kansteiner estimated that by 2005, 20 percent of U.S. oil imports will be coming from Africa.
Bush starts his visit in Senegal, and as Clinton did, will visit Goree Island off the Senegal coast and tour a slave house.
The president is not planning to apologize for slavery, which Rice called "America's birth defect,'' but will "talk about and acknowledge'' what slavery has meant to Africa and the United States.
Bush is not visiting Liberia but the potential of sending in troops will shadow his trip.
On Monday, a team of U.S. military specialists arrived in Monrovia, the capital named after President James Monroe, to assess the situation.
The U.S. has avoided sending troops to Africa since the 1993 Somalia debacle that left 18 U.S. soldiers and scores of Somalis dead on the streets of Mogadishu.
Bush is demanding that Liberian President Charles Taylor step down as he considers sending in peacekeeping troops. Taylor has said he would leave but U.S. officials do not believe Taylor has a definite date by which he will depart.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: "This process does need to be handled in a way that avoids chaos'' and that it needs to be done "as soon as possible.''
Congress, returning from its July 4 recess, may want to discuss and take a vote on sending in troops, amid concerns that the nation's active military and reserves may be overextended with operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and other theaters. |
