Congolese President Denis Sassou Nguesso will propose a permanent all-African peacekeeping force at this week's African Union summit, state television said yesterday.

The permanent peacekeeping force is as part of a "pan-African anti-aggression pact" that Sassou Nguesso will propose to the AU summit taking place from today to Saturday in the Mozambican capital Maputo, the television said.

Sassou Nguesso envisages the force as the future "security pillar" of the 53-member AU, according to the text of the pact, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

The force would provide "a 100% African response" to crises and armed conflicts across the war-ravaged continent and boost its potential to attract foreign investment, the text says.

Its aim would be to "put an end to the continent's inability to prevent and minimise the conflicts tearing it apart (and) the humiliation of having to seek the aid of former colonial powers" in times of crisis, it adds.

Britain poured troops into its former colony Sierra Leone in 2000 to help the government fight rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF).

A French-led peacekeeping force is currently in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo, where ethnic fighting has claimed some 50 000 lives since 1999.

And French troops have also intervened in recent conflicts in Ivory Coast and Liberia, whose government is asking for a US-led peacekeeping force to step in.

The anti-aggression pact sets out a string of mechanisms for "conflict prevention and resolution", which in addition to a permanent peacekeeping force include a pan-African analysis and forecasting network, military cooperation agreements, multilateral exercises and accords on gun control.

Sassou Nguesso believes his pact will offer better guarantees of security and stability to foreign companies considering investing in Africa under the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), an ambitious plan to jump-start economic growth and democratic reform on the continent.

"At a time when Africa is seeking to unite more strongly through the African Union and hopes to relaunch its own development process via ... Nepad, the pact offers a solid base for it to emancipate itself once and for all, find its place on the world stage and realise its hopes for peace," the text says.

Significantly for his own oil-rich country, Sassou Nguesso envisages the peacekeeping force intervening in "all types of aggression, including attempts to destabilise a democratically elected leadership by a rebellion".

Sassou Nguesso was Congo's military ruler from 1979 until 1992, when he was defeated in the country's first multi-party election.

He seized power again in 1997 through a brief but bloody civil war.

Last year he was re-elected with 89% of the vote, but in the absence of two exiled rivals as well as lesser opponents who withdrew from the election alleging fraud. - Sapa-AFP.