Africa News Digest
African Union Summit Condemns War Against Iraq
Thirty-four heads of state, and numerous Foreign Ministers and other top officials, attended the 53-nation African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Feb. 3; there a strong statement against the war on Iraq, largely reflecting the analysis of AU chairman Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, was adopted. The African Union's Central Organ for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution issued a statement Feb. 4 reflecting the position adopted by the heads of state the day before, according to SAPA-AFP. The statement says, "The Central Organ is of the view that a military confrontation in Iraq would be a destabilizing factor in the whole region, and would have far-reaching economic and security consequences for all the countries of the world, and particularly, Africa. The territorial integrity of Iraq should be respected; all diplomatic means should be pursued by the international community to ensure that the Iraqi government complies fully with the provisions of Resolution 1441 and that, in any case, any new decision on the matter should emanate from the UN Security Council, after a consideration of the final report of the inspection team."
Chairman Mbeki, when asked about the consequences of a war, pointed to the oil price hikes after the Middle East conflict in 1973, according to SAPA-AFP. Mbeki said, "That is the origin of this African debt which cannot be paid now. You have seen what is happening now as regards oil and the financial markets generally; the uncertainty which has arisen around this, has pushed up the price.... It is clear if we get back to that situation of high prices of oil, the same thing will happen again." He added, "We would have to say goodbye" to African development plans.
"Very frankly, we don't see what positive results can be achieved out of this in a situation in which, as far as the Union is concerned, it is possible to resolve the matter of weapons of mass destruction without resort to war," said Mbeki.
Even Washington's African Defenders Oppose Iraq War
Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, in an interview published Jan. 30, said that any military intervention in Iraq should only come with United Nations approval. And the Ugandan government, forever to the U.S., in an editorial in the government-owned newspaper, New Vision, warned, "The United States will have set a very dangerous precedent for the future, the precedent that powerful nations can invade weaker ones that they dislike even if they present no real threat."
New Vision noted that the U.S. failed to condemn what it says was Iraq's use of chemical weapons in its war against Iran in the 1980s. "Why were Iraq's chemical weapons acceptable then but not today?" It charged that, in that the Bush Administration has backed out of the global protocols on the development of biological weapons, it has no moral authority on this subject anyway. "It is probably too late to stop the war now. The momentum seems unstoppable.... But we should not deceive ourselves. The cost of the Iraq war will be high...."
Wall Street Journal Sets Up South Africa on WMD Charge
After South Africa undermined the Anglo-American war party's drive Iraq on Jan. 27, calling for Iraq weapons inspectors to be given time to competently conduct their inspections and disarmament, the Wall Street Journal launched an attack, alleging that South Africa is the source of bio-weapons of mass destruction. Only days before, top U.S. officials were pointing to South Africain contrast to Saddam Husseinas an example of "proactive cooperation" with disarmament.
A Jan. 31 article in the Journal, "A Cautionary Disarmament" by Robert Block, attacks the government of Thabo Mbeki, who opposes the Iraq war, for not having produced evidence that it had destroyed the germ warfare capability developed by the former apartheid government, and not having control over possible black markets in the weapons.
"U.S. and British officials, as well as nonproliferation experts, are alarmed by mounting evidence that germs and other substances ... are still being storedand possibly transferred out of the countryin violation of South Africa's treaty obligations."
Author Block cites a new book about the apartheid government's bio-war program, Project Coast, published by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research by Chandre Gould and Peter Folb, who found that "no records are available to confirm that the biological agents were destroyed." The book alleges that a scientist in Project Coast, Daan Goosen, who now runs a laboratory for the South African National Intelligence Agency, had given gave one Bob Zlockie a sample of "a serum that he said could be an antidote for anthrax." Zlockie, who presented himself as working for the CIA and spoke of possibly obtaining $5 million for Goosen to develop the antidote, then disappeared. Goosen also allegedly gave Zlockie 2 ml of freeze-dried, genetically modified Escherischia coli (E. coli), apparently to demonstrate his competence. (Goosen and his lab may have been targets of a sting.)
U.S. officials and scientists are concerned, the article says, because "the substances that Dr. Goosen was handing out should not even exist."
The Journal's parting shot is that the South African case shows that the Iraqi inspections will not be reliable.
South Africa To Provide Anti-Retrovirals for AIDS
South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, in his budget speech later this month, is expected to announce a major government-financed campaign to give antiretroviral drugs, in pilot schemes, to new mothers. The program will then be expanded to other AIDS sufferers, according to the British Observer Feb. 2. This is seen as an end to the deadlock over government funding of antiretrovirals in South Africa.
According to the Observer, "British-American giant GlaxoSmithKline has given a license to a KwaZulu drugs manufacturer, Aspen, to make Combivir, the pill that combines AZT and 3TC, two-thirds of the most common anti-AIDS regimen.... What GlaxoSmithKline calls its 'preferential pricing at cost price' for state and non-governmental organizations will cost $54 per person per month. [Aspen] will sell it for $31 ... but [Aspen] is restricted to supplying the NGO/state sector."
In KwaZulu, the Observer reports, Dr. Patrick McNeil of the Port Shepstone hospital is skeptical of the chances of the program's success, because patients must take the medication every day at the same time for life; otherwise new, drug-resistant strains will emerge. The other difficulty is that these drugs must be taken with food. What happens when the availability of food is irregular?
On this point, Reuters reported on Feb. 4 that "Some would say food is the most important drug in the fight against HIV/AIDS," according to James Morris, Executive Director of the UN's World Food Program, at the end of a tour of sub-Saharan Africa. And there is "no question" that AIDS will ultimately have more impact on food supplies than recurrent droughts, he said, because of its impact on agriculture infrastructure, and because it is killing farmers and farm workers.
Nigeria and South Africa Will Block Zimbabwe Sanctions
Nigeria and South Africa will not consider renewing the Commonwealth sanctions against Zimbabwe, which expire in March, leaving Australia, the third member of the Commonwealth troika on Zimbabwe, to decide whether it will take the lead on the empire's fight to punish Zimbabwe.
Nigeria's high commissioner (ambassador) in Zimbabwe, Wilberforce Juta, said, in the week ending Jan. 24, "The interest of the Commonwealth is to see peace and prosperity.... Ostracizing and maligning the country will not achieve that." He said that sanctions would be "the last resort."
Bheki Khumalo, spokesman for South African President Thabo Mbeki, said Jan. 24, "There is no need for sanctions against Zimbabwe. We are totally opposed to it. It is not even a last resort. There will be total chaos and a meltdown that will threaten the very Zimbabweans we are trying to help."
But the European Union insists it will renew travel sanctions against Zimbabwe, even at the price of postponing or cancelling the April EU-Africa summit in Lisbon. EU sanctions were imposed in February 2002, even before the Zimbabwe elections. The Greek Presidency of the EU, according to AFP Feb. 5, "says it is optimistic [that] a new proposal, being presented at the meeting [Feb. 5], will break the deadlock, although diplomats say the result could be a delay in the Lisbon summit."
Mugabe Asks Anglican Bishop of Cape Town To Mediate
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has invited the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongonkulu Ndungane, "to play a mediating rolepossibly between Britain and Zimbabweto resolve that country's economic and political problems," in the words of the South African Press Association SAPA Feb. 1. Ndungane returned to South Africa Jan. 31 after meeting Mugabe, and told reporters, "I'm very hopeful ... it opens a new window ... The fact that we were invited to get involved in the negotiations is a step in the right direction.... According to me, the problems of Zimbabwe are not insurmountable."
However, reports in rightwing publications in the U.S. and South Africa, indicate that a version of a "regime change" threat is being given to President Mugabe, to "resolve" the economic crisis and make his retirement plans clear. Of course, sanctions are adding to the economic woes of the country.
Ivorian President Gbagbo: 'Let's Try This New Medicine'
Ivorian President Laurent Gbagboafter two weeks of intense domestic and international negotiationtold his countrymen in a TV address Feb. 7, "Let's try this new medicine. If we get better, then we keep it. If not, we try something else." He confirmed the appointment as Prime Minister of the Northerner Seydou Diarra, who has worked under him before. Diarra had been designated Prime Minister in Paris, as an outcome of the peace talks recently ended there.
At the same time, Gbagbo said that he had not yet decided on the composition of the Cabinet, leaving unsettled the question of whether the rebels would get the Defense and Interior portfolios. He said he would not accept the disarming of the regular army. Terms of the French-sponsored peace accord that are at odds with the Ivorian Constitution could not be implemented, he said.
While Gbagbo has not resolved some important questions, this speech breaks with those in his base that rely upon ethnic hatred, and is an essential step for achieving national reconciliation and maintaining Ivory Coast's constitutional and territorial integrity.
One of the leaders of the ethnic hatred faction is the leader of the parliamentary group of his ruling party, Simone Gbagbo, his wife. She was heard on Europe 1 Radio only hours before her husband's speech, saying, "We Ivorians don't want the rebels to enter the government. There have been too many dead, too many massacres."
To defeat this faction, its opponents are increasingly exposing the death squads connected to the government. The northern rebels (MPCI) accuse a former aide de camp of Defense Minister Lida Kouassi of leading one of the death squads, and a former aide de camp of Simone Gbagbo of leading the other one.
The UN Security Council, African Union (AU) summit, and Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) had all endorsed the Paris peace deal.
AU chairman Thabo Mbeki and ECOWAS chairman John Kufuor indicated, however, that the rebels could be given less critical portfolios in the national unity government than the Defense and Interior (security) portfolios they were assigned in Paris.
According to Reuters Feb. 3, Western and West African diplomats "said the post of junior Defense Minister had been proposed to the rebels to calm the protesters [in Abidjan]. Diplomatic sources in Paris said the rebels appeared prepared to accept it. 'It's feasible. It's something we could accept,' a rebel source in Ivory Coast told Reuters."
Negotiations between the parties and ECOWAS chairman Kufuor, who is President of neighboring Ghana, continue; Gbagbo met with him Feb. 6 and rebel leaders led by Col. Michel Gueu of the MPCI met with him Feb. 7.
The implicit but clear threat by the French that they could withdraw their troops, allowing the rebels to complete the conquest of the country within hours, has been shaping decisions.
A summit of regional heads of state, rebels, and the Ivorian government is planned for early this week, in Yamoussoukro (capital of Ivory Coast) or Accra, Ghana.
The crisis has been made worse by a faction or factions of the Ivorian government allowing (and likely encouraging) massive anti-French demonstrations and some rioting and destruction, by tens of thousandssometimes hundreds of thousandsof Abidjan residents. The demonstrators and rioters blame the French government for imposing a peace settlement too favorable to the rebels. Of at least 18,000 French nationals, more than 3,000 have already left, and more are leaving daily. The departure of the bulk of the French from Ivory Coast would tear a gaping hole in the economy.
The UN on Feb. 6 ordered all of its non-essential personnel to leave the country, after declaring a threat level of 4.
A U.S. military advisory team of about 20 men arrived in Abidjan Feb. 5. "A U.S. embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the men were ... 'in Abidjan to monitor the situation with us.' The official refused further comment," AP reported. An additional 500 French troops have also arrived.
Now that President Gbagbo has opened the way for national reconciliationand assuming the rebels respond positivelysome valuable decisions of the Paris peace conference can be realized. "Ivority," a xenophobic concept developed for the purpose of denying true citizenship and economic rights to the 28% immigrant population and keeping the leading Northern figure, Alassane Ouattara, of Burkina Faso origin, out of powerwas put on the table and eliminated. The article of the Constitution stating that citizenship belongs only those born of Ivorian father and mother was changed to read "father or mother."
New laws are supposed to be enacted that will result in a massive naturalization process, as well as in loosening the laws restricting access to land ownership for non-nationals. The problem however, is the basic economic cause of this descent into "Ivority," namely, the prolonged economic crisis. (See EIW, Vol. 2, #5, INDEPTH for background on this crisis.)
Paris Conference on Ivory Coast Failed To Address Foreign Aggression
A key element that the Paris conference on Ivory Coast failed to address was the foreign aggression in the conflict. Using the real political and economic problems of Ivory Coast as a pretext, Burkina Faso and Charles Taylor's Liberia have been running the rebellions in the country. Last week's Le Canard Enchainé reports that the French government knew about this involvement but refused to address it, because it would have forced France to honor the Franco-Ivorian defense treaty, which requires Paris to defend the country in the case of "foreign aggression."
According to Canard, even before the Sept. 19 coup attempt, French intelligence had told the French government that Burkina Faso was hosting the rebels of the MPCI. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin paid a visit to Libya's Muammar Qaddafi and to Burkina Faso's President Blaise Campaore last October, to tell them to end their interference. But de Villepin made only vague reference to this issue in an interview with La Croix Dec. 16, saying "foreign meddlers," and "people supporting the rebels with equipment and weapons," would face consequences (unspecified).
The question that remains open is, for whom these countries are operating and for what purpose? The presence of oil in the Gulf of Guinea, including off Ivory Coast, has been noted in the context that the U.S. is seeking African sources of oil. Walter Kansteiner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, has visited Ivory Coast twice in recent months. However, private international networks, mafia-style, with powerful connections within the governments of both Burkina and Liberia, and also with Gbagbo, may be more important.
Le Monde journalist Stephen Smith reveals that Gbagbo's wife has brought him under the control of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, an American Pentecostal church, which is an extension of the British-Israelite Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance of Great Britain. Smith says that it is under the influence of his wife and of that church, that Gbagbo has used death squads against rebels. Other sources report that the churches dominated by the Rev. "Diamond Pat" Robertson's rightwing Christians and Israelis, are strong in Liberia.
|