§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for International Development what financial support his Department has provided to the African Union since the expiry of the agreement in August 2003. [147345]
§ Hilary BennDFID fully supports the vision of the African Union, particularly its key role in peace and security across the continent. Since February 1999 DFID has given £1,089,745 to the Conflict Management Centre of the OAU/AU. This is distributed in three tranches: February 1999 to September 2000 (£311,812); June 2001 to August 2003 (£677,933) and October 2003 to March 2004 (£100,000). The last tranche is via the United Nations Development Programme and will be spent shortly.
We have also been supporting an AU peacekeeping mission in Burundi bilaterally with £3.9 million to Mozambique as one of the troop contributing countries and we are about to release £2 million through the AU itself for the same mission.