From Agence France Presse.
LISBON,Jan 28 (AFP)- Cooperation and development ministers of the European
Union's 15 member states meet here Friday and Saturday to debate future EU
policy on Africa, including poverty reduction and the use of aid and
cooperation to prevent conflict.
 The informal meeting, first under Portugal's six-month presidency that
began January 1, was opened with a work session on conflict prevention and
management, and EU-Africa cooperation on security issues.
 In the wake of a military coup in Cote d'Ivoire last month that toppled
elected president Henri Konan Bedie, the ministers were also looking at
criteria for suspending EU aid to countries going through what is termed an
"interruption" in the democratic process.
 It will be a delicat
e balance in dealing with countries like Cote
d'Ivoire, where the ousted president was himself under accusation of
misappropriating large sums of EU aid, where the military committed itself
to restoring the democratic process by next October.
 The Cote d'Ivoire case study will provide the ministers with a platform
for debate on the rule of law and support for democracy in Africa
generally, a debate bound to touch on the fight against corruption rampant
in many African states.
 Corruption and EU aid are bound to loom large in discussions here in light
of pending negotiations between the EU and its 71 former African, Caribbean
and Pacific (ACP) colonies on renewal of the Lome Convention on trade, aid
and discipline.
 The link between corruption and aid and cooperation is the major sticking
point in the ACP talks, which are not on the Lisbon agenda and which resume
in Brussels next week.
 On Saturday, the
15 ministers were to debate the economic situation in
Africa, ways of alleviating poverty through debt reduction, and a greater
private sector role in African development.
 African leaders, at the summit in the Gabonese capital Libreville last
week, declared poverty reduction on their continent was "a challenge they
must take up themselves."
 That summit was held under the aegis of the International Monetary Fund,
with top staff of the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank
(ADB) participating.
 The African leaders hailed the Group of Eight(G8)industrialized countries
for deciding at their own summit in Cologne, Germany, last June to slash 70
billion dollars off the more than 200 billion dollars in debt of the
world's poorest nations.
 Also on the EU agenda here was the first EU-African summit, tentatively
scheduled for Cairo next April 3-4 but shrouded in uncertainty because of

the threatened participation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic(SADR).
 The SADR, declared independence in the Western Sahara by the Algeria-
backed Polisaio Front separatist movement, was recognised by a small
majority in the Organisation of African Unity in 1982, but not by the
United Nations.
 The SADR's recent decision not to attend an EU-Africa summit cleared the
biggest obstacle, but organisational problems threatened to push back the
dates.
 Africa is alone among the world's great regions in not yet having a summit
with the EU, after the EU-Asian summit in 1997, the EU-Latin American and
Caribbean summit last June.  The Eu held a one-day summit with China in
Beijing last month.

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