WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- The United States will set up a new Africa Command to coordinate military activities and bolster security on the continent.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday that President George W. Bush approved the Pentagon plan to better monitor potential threats, the BBC reported.
Gates said the Pentagon would confer with the U.S. Congress in the coming months to decide how the plan will proceed. The command would be the fifth regional U.S. military operations base worldwide, but the location has not yet been determined.
Concerns that lawless parts of Africa could become a safe haven for trans-national terrorists intent on harming U.S. strategic interests such as oil, along with increased resource competition from China, are said to have prompted the move.
By some estimates, the United States will rely on African oil for 25 percent of its energy needs by 2015.
The Africa Command will be less focused on combat operations as opposed to other U.S. regional commands, Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Instead, efforts will be made to strengthen border security and reinforce allies against threats that could spill over from war-torn areas such as Somalia, where Islamists were recently ousted from power.
"This command will enable us to have a more effective and integrated approach than the current arrangement ... an outdated arrangement left over from the Cold War," Gates said, adding that the new command would "oversee security, co-operation, building partnership capability, defense support to non-military missions, and, if directed, military operations."
Some critics, however, counter that a heavy-handed U.S. military presence could backfire and raise anti-American sentiment if development and human rights issues are not addressed.
