West Africa Calls Extraordinary Security Summit
Foreign ministers of the group's 10-member Special Mediation Committee meet Tuesday to prepare the summit in Abuja, said a statement from ECOWAS on Friday night.
"An extraordinary summit of ECOWAS heads of state and government to discuss political and security issues affecting the sub-region will take place on April 11 at ECOWAS secretariat," the statement said.
The agenda would be topped by fighting in the volatile triangle where the borders of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone meet, as well as the political situation in Ivory Coast and Guinea Bissau, it added.
ECOWAS heads of state would also review plans agreed by the bloc last December, to deploy a 1,700-strong regional force to try to end clashes involving rebels from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
ECOWAS agreed to field troops from Nigeria, Niger and Senegal in the troubled border area but has yet to muster the logistics support to go ahead.
The agenda also includes discussion of the UN Security Council resolution on sanctions against Liberia as well as the situation in the Gambia River basin, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau and Senegal, the statement added.
The sanctions on Liberia, which has been accused of collaborating with rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone since 1991, aim to halt the trade in so-called "Blood Diamonds" from Sierra Leone, which the United Nations says pass through Liberia and help fund the conflict.
Ivory Coast has been dogged by political instability since its first military coup in December 1999.
Nigeria, the regional power, has shouldered most of West Africa's peacekeeping since 1990, notably in conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
But the civilian government that replaced military rulers in 1999 has come under intense domestic pressure to end the costly foreign missions.
ECOWAS was founded as a 16-nation group in 1975, but Mauritania, which straddles Black and Arab Africa, withdrew its membership last year.
(Reuter)