|
President
Bush Continues Trip to African Nations, 7/9/03 Related
Lesson Plan
In his first official trip to the African continent this week, President George Bush visited a slave-trading outpost on Senegal's Goree Islands and met with South African President Thabo Mbeki to discuss a host of topics, including a push to secure the resignation of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. The United States has criticized Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for 23 years, for alleged human rights abuses in his country. President Bush hopes to encourage South Africa to help pressure Mugabe to retire. "We are of one mind about the urgent need to address the challenges of Zimbabwe " President Bush said of Mbeki. On the President's agenda President Bush is scheduled to visit five African nations. He will travel to Botswana and Uganda this week, and will end his trip on Saturday with a meeting with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military ruler now serving his second democratically elected term in office. President Bush will discuss economic development, AIDS and regional conflicts with the leaders of the host countries, and will promote a new plan for fighting terrorism in African countries. The $100 million counter-terror initiative will focus on security in Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Djibouti and will provide funding for strengthening air and port security, and tightening border patrols. "Many African governments have the will to fight the war on terror," Bush said in a speech before he left. "We will give them to the tools and the resources to win the war on terror." Terrorists have sought refuge in some African countries, made vulnerable by economic troubles and political unrest. The continent has also seen a series of deadly terrorist attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets that have killed hundreds of Africans. In 1998, terrorists simultaneously bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people. Last year, terrorists bombed an Israeli-owned hotel in Nairobi. The attack resulted in the deaths of sixteen people. Pressure to intervene in regional conflicts Despite a full agenda of issues President Bush hopes to address, two ongoing and bloody wars threaten to overshadow most other concerns. One such conflict is the five-year-old war in Congo that has left 3.3 million people dead. Also making headlines in the last few weeks, the situation in Liberia, a West African nation formed in 1847 by freed American slaves, where escalating violence has ended a short-lived cease-fire in the country's 14-year civil war. President Bush has sent an assessment team, comprised of U.S. military personnel, to Liberia to determine whether the U.S. should take a peacekeeping role in the country. At a press conference, held Wednesday in the South African capital of Pretoria, President Bush told reporters he had discussed the Liberia situation with Mbeki. "(Mbeki) asked whether or not we'd be involved and I said, 'Yes, we'll be involved.' We're now determining the extent of our involvement," the president said, according to a CNN report. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked the U.S. to join France, Pakistan, Nigeria and several other nations in sending peacekeeping forces to the Congolese town of Bunia. Annan, joined by British and French officials, has also called on the U.S. to lead a peacekeeping mission to Liberia to re-establish the cease-fire. On Wednesday, President Bush left South Africa for Botswana -- a largely peaceful country in the midst of a mounting AIDS crisis. President Bush was originally scheduled to visit several other countries in Africa earlier this year, but postponed the trip because of the Iraq War. Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice are traveling with the President. By Kristina Nwazota, Online NewsHour
|