Ministers and experts from about 20 African countries Tuesday drafted a declaration against terrorism for adoption by an African anti-terrorism summit scheduled to open in Senegal's capital Dakar on Wednesday.
The document was drawn up by the foreign, interior and defense ministers along with security and terrorism experts at a preliminary meeting in Dakar, according to reports reaching here from the city.
"We have agreed on the need to adopt an African pact against terrorism, but we also noted that the meeting was called in haste and it was necessary to first adopt a (more general) declaration," Comoran Foreign Minister Soef Mohamed el Amine said at the end of the meeting.
According to the draft's text made public after the talks, the African leaders will vow to seek out, arrest, try or extradite any person or group of people implicated in the preparation,execution or support of terrorist actions.
Pledging to "neither facilitate nor encourage any act of terrorism", the draft also calls for the naming of an "African coordinator" in the war against global terrorism.
Representatives from Cote d'Ivoire, the Comoros, Cape Verde, Cameroon, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Tunisia, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Togo among others attended the closed-door talks.
Speaking at the opening of the preliminary meeting, Senegalese Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio called on African countries to join the international system to fight against global terrorism.
Meanwhile, the minister expressed his hope that African continent, along with other continents, should pursue a fair world and a solution "of extreme urgency for the Palestinian plight".
The top agenda of the discussions included preventing access by suspected terrorists or their equipment into African countries, and sharing information on people suspected of having links with terrorist networks.
The African treaty against terrorism was proposed by Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade on September 17 in the wake of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Wade said that Africans can help fight terrorism by keeping terrorists off their soil and cutting off their finances.
Africa already has become an important position against terrorism since terrorist car-bombings of United States embassies in the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 which claimed over 220 lives and made thousands more wounded.
(Xinhua News Agency 10/17/2001)
