AU Calls For Help Fighting W.Africa Drug Smuggling

AU Commission chairman Jean Ping told an African summit in Ethiopia that the crime wave was growing rapidly.

The African Union urged rich nations on Monday to help it fight a rise in drug trafficking in West Africa that it said was threatening peace and security across the region.

AU Commission chairman Jean Ping told an African summit in Ethiopia that the crime wave was growing rapidly.

"It is dovetailing with organised cross-border criminality with all the obvious consequences for stability, peace and security," Ping said.

"I would like to make an urgent appeal to the international community for it to boost its support to the efforts made by the region's countries to identify and implement a set of measures that would stop and eliminate this hazard."

U.N. anti-narcotics experts say parts of West Africa are under attack from powerful Colombian cartels that channel at least 50 tonnes of cocaine each year -- and possibly twice that -- through the area on its way to Europe.

Experts say the criminal trade is undermining the region's democratic governments and distorting its more vulnerable economies, which are mostly dependent on raw material exports.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also told the summit that drug trafficking was becoming a major challenge to security and governance in West Africa.

"We are working closely with the Economic Community of West African States to roll back this dangerous phenomenon," Ban said. "But these efforts have only just begun."