Brussels, 14/10/2010 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 20 October, after two years of hard preparation, the EU and African Union (AU) are to start the final command post exercise (CPX) as part of the Amani Africa cycle (Eurorecamp) - (see EUROPE 9840). The exercise will take place in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with a view to training African Union structures to conceive a peacekeeping operation, and to making the African Union internal structures operate towards this objective, the EU special representative for African capabilities, General Pierre-Michel Joana, told EUROPE. The crisis scenario developed especially for the Amani cycle allows all instruments available to the AU to operate, and also allows examination of interaction with the United Nations and its own political dialogue capacity. It will continue until 29 October with around 150 people (military, police and civilians) under the orders of Nigerian General Samaila Iliya and French General François Gonnet. If the AU gives its approval, cooperation with the EU on developing African peacekeeping and security capabilities could continue with a view this time to finalising the creation of an African standby force (pan-African rapid response force). Given the shortfall of AU human resources, this initial objective has had to be temporarily discarded. Nonetheless, the current exercise would allow the Africans to take stock of the state of preparedness of the African standby force to then see what efforts must be made in the next three years to improve results, General Joana said. (A.By./transl.jl)