Baton Rouge La. - Benin's ambassador has a message for all descendants of African slaves: His nation apologizes. "It's so easy to say white man did it to us, but we share in the responsibility," Ambassador Cyrille Oguin Told an audience Friday at Southern University.

Baton Rouge is the first of several U.S. cities where Oguin is formally apologizing for his country's role in the slave trade that brought Africans to America.

Other leaders from the nation have made similar addresses in recent years. Benin, a country of 4.7 million people, was called Dahomey in the 17th century, when it was a major supplier of slaves for white exporters shipping from what was called the Slave Coast.

Some accounts say Dahomey rounded up more than 3 million people for sale to slave traders.

Benin is located in West Africa and covers a land area Of 112,622 Sq. km. and constitutes a long stretch of hand perpendicular to the Coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It is bordered on the North by Burkina Faso and the Republic of Niger, on the East by the Federal Republic of Nigeria and on the West by the Republic of Togo.