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. END ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------