N. Africa lags behind in setting up peacekeeping troops: official

North Africa lags behind in establishing a brigade for the African Standby Force (ASF), the continental peacekeeping army, as opposed to the other African regions, Zimbabwe's defense minister said Friday.

Speaking at the end of a five-day African Union (AU) meeting in the Zimbabwean resort of Victoria Falls, Sidney Sekeramayi, who is also chairperson of the AU's Specialized Technical Committee on Defense, Security and Safety meeting, attributed the delay in North Africa to security problems in the region.

"I think at this point in time, because of the instability in North Africa, they have not been able to come together as solid a form as we are here in Southern Africa," he told reporters.

But, he said, efforts are being made to ensure that those lagging behind will be able to meet their full operational capacity soon.

Pressed to answer whether the ASF will be fully operational by December, the deadline set by the AU, he said, "I think in some parts of the continent it will be operational."

The meeting brought together defense ministers from more than 50 African countries to discuss methods for putting the ASF into operation.

The AU has already missed its previously-set deadlines to set up the peacekeeping force that can respond to emergencies in 2008, 2010 and 2013.

Sekeramayi said that all that needs to be done to establish the force has been identified, but pointed out that foreign funding is a big problem.

"What has also been bedeviling our operations is reliance on foreign funding because people will not give their money as good Samaritans," he said.

He said some foreign forces that had been asked to intervene in Africa to help solve crises had "ulterior motives" and had in some instances outstayed their welcome.

"It has become some kind of business to have people operating and never really finishing the job," he said, adding that a fully operational ASF would set timelines for its interventions.

To help solve the funding problem, the ministers called upon member states to make voluntary contributions to the AU's peace fund.

The plan to create the ASF was initially put forward in the AU's Constitutive Act of 2001 that gives the organization the right to intervene in a member state in grave circumstances such as war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Economic blocs in Africa's five subregions, namely East Africa, West Africa, Southern Africa, North Africa and Central Africa, are supposed to create a standby brigade each, with member states contributing army, air force, police and civilian personnel.

Initially, the AU wanted each brigade to have a strength of 5,000, but this has since been scaled down to 3,000, due to a financial strain among member states.

Africa has only financed a small part of the AU's operation, with all 53 member states contributing 4 percent of the 2013 annual budget of about 280 million U.S. dollars, according to reports. Endi