Union for Twelve

In steamy, sleepy Yaounde, little jungle capital of Cameroun, leaders of a dozen new nations* of former French Africa conferred for two days, then proclaimed themselves a new economic unit, to be known as the Afro-Malagasy Economic Union. The new union will have a common customs pact, a common airline (Air Afrique) and closely linked foreign policies. Committees are already at work on vague plans for a joint diplomatic corps to represent them all abroad (but not at the U.N., where each will have its delegation) and for a coordinated military defense system. They will all continue their loose ties with France, which are now based mostly on mutual economic and political interests rather than on any formal machinery.

Behind the scheme lay the fear that twelve poor, relatively small countries might not long survive alone among such expansionist wheeler-dealers as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure of Guinea. Guiding spirit of the conference was Ivory Coast's able President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, 55, who had years of experience in the French National Assembly, has become ex-French Africa's most influential statesman.

The tone of the new union was moderate. Speech after speech urged caution in dealings with the Communist bloc, and plans were made for a hookup with Europe's six-nation Common Market. As their next step, the conferees decided to seek some kind of affiliation with huge Nigeria and rubber-rich Liberia. If this came off, West Africa would have a powerful counterweight to the noisy, elbowing radicals of Ghana and Guinea.

* Senegal, Ivory Coast, Congo Republic, Chad, Gabon, Dahomey, Central African Republic, Upper Volta, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroun, Malagasy Republic (the former Madagascar).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.