Bush condemns slavery on Africa tour

US President George Bush began his Africa tour today with a tribute to slaves who he said had endured the “one of the greatest crimes of history”.

Speaking on Senegal’s Goree Island, where many Africans were processed before sent into servitude in the Americas, Bush did not apologise for slavery, but he said it was a sin that had nonetheless stirred his country’s commitment to freedom.

The US leader has chosen to visit five countries that represent a more hopeful and democratic future for the troubled continent: Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria.

On his five day trip he will discuss the threats to those countries from Aids and international terrorists, and he will hear many pleas for Washington to send peacekeeping troops to the war-torn West African nation of Liberia.

As well as visiting Goree Island, Bush’s time in Senegal was taken up by talks with President Abdoulaye Wade and the leaders of Benin, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Sierra Leone.

Bush said the group had “a good discussion” on Liberia, and he reiterated his call for Liberia’s President Charles Taylor to step down.

He said he had not decided yet whether to send US troops there.

“We are now in the process of determining the extent of our participation,” the president said in the Senegalese capital Dakar, where security was tightened to unprecedented levels for his visit.

At the slave processing house on Goree Island, Bush said previous generations should not be judged by modern standards, “yet in every time there were men and women who clearly saw this sin and called it by name.”

“For 250 years, the captives endured an assault on their culture and their dignity. The spirit of Africans in America did not break,” Bush said.

“Yet the spirit of their captors was corrupted. Small men took on the powers and airs of tyrants and masters. Years of unpunished brutality and bullying and rape produced a dullness and hardness of conscience.”

Despite painful shared history, Bush said the United States and African nations must work together to eradicate disease and war, and to encourage greater business ties.

“We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice,” said Bush, who flies to South Africa later today.

The visit is Bush’s third to Africa, but his first as president. Only three other US presidents have been to the region.

Many African leaders see Bush’s visit as a key part of a strategy to combat rising anti-American sentiment and the image of Washington as an international bully.

Bush’s decision to attack Iraq was loudly criticised in Africa, partly because of the large Muslim populations of some countries, but also because America sidelined the United Nations.