U.S. to Give Ghana Two Naval Ships, Train Troops

ACCRA (Reuters) - The United States is to give two naval vessels to the Ghanaian navy and offer manpower training to a battalion of Ghanaian troops due to leave for peacekeeping duties in Sierra Leone, a U.S. embassy official said.

``They're excess military property and Ghana is paying for the refurbishment and for getting the ships down here,'' Brooks Ann Robinson, the embassy's public affairs director, told Reuters on Friday.

They are due to arrive from Alaska in about two months.

Robinson said the United States was keen to work with the new administration of President John Kufuor, who took office in January, and was looking forward to greater military cooperation with Ghana.

Ghanaian Defense Minister Kwame Addo-Kufuor told Reuters the vessels would be useful for patrolling Ghana's Atlantic territorial waters, where he said foreign fishing vessels were involved in poaching and other illegal fishing practices.

Robinson said the U.S. army was also training two Nigerian peacekeeping battalions.