ABUJA (Reuters) - The U.S. military's new Africa Command, AFRICOM, is working to assuage Nigerian fears that it means to meddle in internal security or control oil resources, two senior command officials said on Thursday.
Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer, most populous nation, and a key contributor to peacekeeping missions, has shown hostility towards AFRICOM, which was established on October 1 and is based in Stuttgart, Germany.
Earlier this month, the Nigerian government formally declared that it would not welcome a U.S. military base in Nigeria or elsewhere in West Africa -- echoing similar sentiment from South Africa, another major power in sub-Saharan Africa.
AFRICOM officials have long said that they had no intention of establishing a military base in Africa anytime soon and the new command was designed to offer aid and training to African countries and foster security and development.
"I know in my heart that Africans want security and stability on their own continent," Mary Carlin Yates, deputy to the AFRICOM commander for civil-military activities, told a news conference at the U.S. embassy in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
She and the deputy for military operations, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, have met the Nigerian chief of defence staff and other top brass, the foreign affairs minister and the national security adviser to get their message across.
"What we have learnt from listening to the Nigerian authorities is that we probably should have been consulting earlier," said Yates. She said there had been "misunderstandings" about what AFRICOM meant.
The U.S. says it spends about $9 billion a year in Africa on health, development and governance projects. Security-related programmes such as joint training exercises with African armies and navies receive about $250 million a year.
Many Africans see the creation of AFRICOM as a sign of Washington's determination to control oil and mineral resources. Nigeria, the fifth-largest supplier of crude to the United States, has been particularly wary of this.
"The purpose of establishing AFRICOM has nothing to do with oil the in the Gulf of Guinea," Yates said.
Moeller said AFRICOM, which is gradually taking over control of existing U.S. military activities on the continent that were previously run by other commands, would not mean a build-up of U.S. troops on the continent.
"AFRICOM does not intend to station large operational units in Africa," said Moeller, adding that if invited by African countries, small forces could come in for specific tasks and then leave.
Before coming to Abuja, Yates and Moeller went to Burkina Faso to meet President Blaise Compaore who is the current president of the West African bloc ECOWAS. They were due to travel from Nigeria to Djibouti, where the U.S. has garrisoned 1,800 troops since 2002.
