Brussels, 22/02/2010 (Agence Europe) - On 16 February, the European Union pledged €15 million to the Economic Community of West African States (ECWAS) to help it tackle drug trafficking, organised crime and drug abuse. The immigration ministers of Spain, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, and France, Brice Hortefeux, announced the aid at the opening of a three-day sub-regional ministerial conference on drug trafficking, held in Dakar. At the meeting, attended by the home affairs ministers of Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Cap Verde, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal, a roadmap - the Dakar Initiative - was debated and adopted. The aim of this initiative is to put in place coordination mechanisms to make the ECWAS action plan against drug trafficking, adopted in October 2008, operational. Hortefeux also proposed, as part of a European Pact to counter international drug trafficking, strengthening the liaison officers' centres in Accra, in Ghana, and Dakar, in Senegal, before including them in a large-scale information sharing network that will also contain Europol. (B.C./transl.rt)