Ministry for Foreign Affairs – November 7, 2011

U.S. State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism Daniel Benjamin met on November 7 in Washington with Minister Delegate for Maghreb and African Affairs Abdelkader Messahel and the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Mali, Mauritania and Niger.

The meeting was attended by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson.

Held at the U.S. State Department, the meeting was convened two months to the day after the convention of the Algiers conference on Partnership, Security and Development, which had gathered the countries of the Sahel region (Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger) and their extra-regional partners, including an important delegation.

On the eve of the Algiers conference last September, Mr. Benjamin had declared that that meeting enabled the participants “to collectively create and adapt counterterrorism strategies, which will help the countries of the region face the threat to which they are confronted.”

The Algiers conference had fostered the emergence of a set of guiding principles which structure and organize the partnership in the areas of development and security between the countries of the region and their partners.

The principles include ownership, indivisibility of security and development, and complementarity between the various strategies and approaches relating to the Sahel and the joint strategy designed and implemented by the countries of the Sahel.
To that end, the two-day meeting convened in Washington deals with the priorities defined by the countries of the region with regards to partnership, which equally deal with combating terrorism and transnational organized crime and with poverty eradication.

In that regard, Mr. Messahel had declared after the Algiers conference proceedings that the countries of the Sahel had demonstrated “their ability to defend themselves against the scourges affecting the region thanks to a joint strategy.”

“The Algiers conference enabled the countries of the Sahel region to show their extra-regional partners that they have a real strategy and a unified vision in the fight against terrorism, organized crime and poverty,” Mr. Messahel had underlined.

Acknowledging the efforts deployed by the countries of the Sahel region, the extra-regional partners have also understood that “security and development in the Sahel is the business of the countries of the region,” he had insisted.