The United States will send a
team to Nigeria in the next few
weeks to discuss with the new
government ways to renew
cooperation in the fight against the Islamist militant group Boko
Haram, a senior U.S. diplomat
said on Thursday. Washington has quickly reached
out to new President
Muhammadu Buhari since his
election victory in March and
sent U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry to his inauguration last week to underscore U.S. interest
in working with his
government. Tensions emerged between the
former government of President
Goodluck Jonathan and the
Obama administration last year
over corruption and human
rights abuses by the Nigerian military in its campaign to crush
Boko Haram. In his inauguration speech,
Buhari vowed to defeat Boko
Haram and called the group,
which pledged allegiance to the
Islamic State in Syria and Iraq in
March, "mindless" and "godless." "With the new government we
are optimistic we can reset the
relationship," U.S. Assistant
Secretary of State for Africa,
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told a
congressional hearing. "We want to work with him and
have expressed that to him." She said Buhari had committed
both publicly and privately to
"do everything possible to
address the situation in terms of
resources and staff" to tackle
Boko Haram, which launched its insurgency in 2009. U.S. officials have said the
United States could send more
advisers to Nigeria to train its
military and help boost the
economy, the largest in Africa,
through more investment in its oil and gas sector. Thomas-Greenfield said the
United States was encouraged
that Buhari's first trips were to
neighbors Niger and Chad,
which are part of a multi-
national force being set up to fight Boko Haram's insurgency
in the Lake Chad region. Nigeria's Major-General Tukur
Buratai has been appointed to
head the new force, which will
be funded partly by the
international community. "He is someone we have
worked with and someone we
feel will be a positive force on
the multinational task force,"
she said, adding that Buhari was
still studying options to fund a stepped- up effort to tackle
Boko Haram. Analysts say the challenge for
the United States is to work
with Buhari while giving him
time to address problems in the
Nigerian military. A report by rights group
Amnesty International this
week reinforced U.S. concerns
over human rights abuses by
Nigerian security forces. In a 133-page report issued on
Wednesday, Amnesty said more
than 8,000 people died while
being held prisoner by the army
in the campaign against Boko
Haram, many of them murdered, starved or tortured. Amnesty said many of the
prisoners, including boys as
young as nine years old, were
rounded up in Boko Haram
strongholds and shot dead
while inside detention facilities.

www.trust.org/item/20150604180234-ow0en/

Cc: lalasticlala

Uncle Sam is never a trusted ally.


I prefer the east to west.