30 April Washington Times - U.S. Force Aims to Secure Africa by Jason Motlagh.

The United States hopes by year's end to establish an Africa Command that will anchor military operations across a continent seen to be of increasing strategic importance and threatened by transnational terrorists.

The new force, known informally as AfriCom, will preside over all countries on the continent except Egypt and is expected to be operational by the fall, according to Pentagon officials. They say it is needed to secure vast, lawless areas where terrorists have sought safe haven to regroup and threaten U.S. interests.

"Part of the rationale behind the development of this command is clearly the growing emergence of the strategic importance of Africa from a global ... security and economic standpoint," Rear Adm. Robert Moeller, head of the Africa Command Transition Team, said earlier this month. "This allows us to work more closely with our African partners to ... enhance the stability across the continent." ...