Germany, Kenya agree to fight terror

20 January 2004

NAIROBI – German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki agreed Tuesday on increasing co-operation in the fight against terrorism and more German aid to the East African nation.

The two leaders signed an agreement calling on Germany to double development aid to Kenya in the years 2004 and 2005, representing EUR 50 million assistance this year and next.

Intensified co-operation between secret services of the two countries on security matters was among the areas in which the fight against terrorism was to be more closely coordinated.

Schroeder was in Kenya on a tour of several African nations, his first in Africa.

Meanwhile, the German embassy in South Africa said Tuesday that former South African president Nelson Mandela was unable to attend a planned meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Mandela and Schroeder were scheduled to meet at the start of the German leader’s two-day visit to South Africa. It was not clear Tuesday why Mandela could not honour the appointment.

Schroeder’s scheduled meeting with officials from the Nelson Mandela Foundation to discuss the charity organisation’s work in the field of HIV/AIDS would go ahead, the embassy said.

Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president with the fall of apartheid in 1994 and retired in 1999.

The energetic statesman was recently reported to be on holiday with his family in the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

DPA
Subject: German news