Piracy, Al-Qaeda on agenda for West Africa meet

Leaders from the 15 states in West Africa’s regional body will meet in Abuja next week for talks on regional security, including a rise in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, the bloc said Friday. Heads of state and government from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) are also expected to select a new chairman during the two-day summit that opens on February 16, spokesman Sunny Ugoh said. Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan is the body’s current chairman. Security sector reform in chronically-unstable Guinea Bissau, and the “security and humanitarian situation in the Sahel,” where an Al-Qaeda-linked group has carried a series of attacks and kidnappings, will also be discussed, Ugoh said. A recent uptick in piracy in the Gulf of Guinea is also on the agenda, he added. The bloc is expected to name a successor to current commission president, James Victor Gbeho of Ghana. Foreign ministers will meet in Nigeria’s capital on February 15, ahead of the presidential summit.