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UNITED NATIONS - African leaders told the U.N. Security Council not to neglect conflicts and the human toll of poverty on the continent while they concentrated on fighting terrorism and rebuilding Afghanistan.

In an all-day council debate on Tuesday, the ministers from Africa also said it was time their nations took responsibility for the turmoil in the region but that the world needed to do far more to alleviate poverty, unfavorable trade regulations and debt, often the root of conflicts.

"After Sept. 11, and after the attention being devoted by the international community to the terrorist attacks, it was important that we try to refocus the attention of the world on Africa," said Mauritius Foreign Minister Anil Kumarsingh Gayan, who chaired the meeting.

"The pattern in the past has been to run to New York when there is a problem. Now we are trying to look for solutions inside Africa," he said.

Mauritius holds the current presidency of the 15-nation body and organized the session that attracted foreign ministers from Norway, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Zambia as well as Mauritius. Other African, European and Latin American countries sent deputy foreign ministers.

The Security Council, in charge of authorizing peacekeeping missions, has about half of its 47,000 soldiers in African operations, such as Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia-Eritrea. In the past decade, tasks have multiplied to include re-integrating combatants into society after a conflict and helping to organize government bodies.

But many other conflicts have been neglected and others, such as in Somalia, nearly abandoned.

Amara Essy, secretary-general of the Organization of African Unity, said African leaders must "stop blaming others" for the continent's problems.

He proposed a closer structure for cooperation between the United Nations and the OAU, something African envoys said his predecessors had largely neglected, particularly for spotting conflicts and for following up peacekeeping ventures.

"If we don't work together, Africa will not make it out of the current crisis," said Essy, a former foreign minister of the Ivory Coast and a U.N. General Assembly president.

Congo's Foreign Affairs Minister, Leonard She Okitundu, said United Nations' cooperation with subregional groupings on the continent was still lacking and the council's resolutions were too often ignored.

In other problem areas of the world, he said assistance was granted on a massive scale through trade "That kind of assistance did not occur in Africa,' he said.

But U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte said the world needed to focus attention on Africa's conflicts. "I am here to say today on behalf of my government that Africa matters to the United States, both by history and by choice," he said."

The structure mentioned by most Africans as a hope for the future was the New Partnership for Africa's Development, known as NEPAD, a rescue plan organized by African nations and backed by the Group of Eight industrial countries.

NEPAD is modeled on the U.S. Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War Two and is targeting annual investment of $64 billion to revive Africa's ailing economies, although few believe that amount of money will be materialize. The plan aims to use peer pressure to tackle the oppression and corruption that have put off investors. Nampa-Reuters

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