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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 April 1999 Issue No. 423
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Interview Profile Features Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Africa seeks a way out
By Dina EzzatWill a restructuring of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) allow the 36-year-old body to take on a more effective role in bringing peace to a continent marred by so many military conflicts? "Yes", seemed to be the unanimous answer from participants at last week's bi-annual meeting of OAU foreign ministers that was held in the Ethiopian capital.
"If we restructure the OAU, we could have a better-selected staff, people with experience in political and military crisis prediction and management. This would mean a better capability for predicting potential conflicts and finding a way out of existing ones," explained Ahmed Haggag, assistant to the OAU secretary-general.
Thus, the latest OAU meeting chose to focus on the internal reform of the organisation, and it now seems likely the OAU secretariat will embark on this restructuring sooner rather than later. However, according to the organisation's own assessment, the reform project is likely to take about five years to completion, and possibly even more, according to the ability of the member states to keep paying their annual dues, while also catching up on their arrears.
Meanwhile, military conflicts across the continent, not to speak of political turbulence, cannot be left unattended, if Africa does not wish to see its present "underdevelopment" confirmed and even aggravated. "And what we have now is much more than our fair share," commented one participant.
Indeed, despite an agenda originally concentrated on organisational reform, last week's meeting did find time to review the deteriorating situation in such conflict areas as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, the Comoros and Somalia. Moreover, the ministerial meeting could not escape the unmistakable imprint of the Ethiopian-Eritreian war that was proceeding a mere 700 kilometers from the conference hall.
Eritreia, for its part, chose to boycott the meeting.
"The Eritreian chargé d'affaires [in Addis Ababa] was supposed to attend. We issued him his accreditation card, but because Eritreia likes to create a scene, he just threw away his pass," said an Ethiopian government official who asked for her name to be withheld. "Eritreia has no intention of peacefully withdrawing from the Ethiopian land that it is occupying. The government in Asmara does not want to implement the OAU peace plan. They just don't want to withdraw from our land. The attitude of the Eritreian chargé d'affaires is quite consistent with this basic hostility," she added.
Omar Saleh, the Eritreian chargé d'affaires in the Ethiopian capital, begged to differ. "The reason for which I did not take part is that I was afraid of being insulted and humiliated by the Ethiopian authorities, who have been very mean to me and who insulted the [Eritreian] ambassador [to Ethiopia] before he left Addis," Saleh declared. "In any event, Ethiopia is insisting on proceeding with its hostilities against Eritreia, when the government in Addis Ababa knows very well that there is nothing in the OAU plan that says we have to withdraw from disputed land. After all, this land is ours. It was the Ethiopians who started the military aggression and occupation of Eritreian land in 1997," he added.
So, despite the OAU's peace-making efforts, both Ethiopia and Eritreia are refusing to compromise. "Eritreia has to withdraw from all Ethiopian land unilaterally, immediately, and without any conditions," said Seyoum Mesifin, Ethiopia's Foreign Minister. He added, "This is not negotiable, because we cannot negotiate when the Eritreians are pointing a gun at our heads."
According to Saleh, however, Eritreia is not occupying Ethiopian land: "Definitely not; this is simply not true. We are just in a self-defence situation," he said.
This conflict, which blew up early last year, is only one example of how bad blood can brew in Africa. It is also an example of the limited ability of the OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution to deal with the proliferation of armed conflict across the continent. As Haggag himself admitted, this mechanism definitely needs to be updated and improved.
Experts on African affairs argue that the present conflicts in Africa could easily multiply, due to countless unresolved post-colonial ethnic struggles, as well as on-going and generally ill-intentioned foreign interference in African business. In the opinion of such experts, the way out is to establish common economic interests between the different African countries. OAU officials point out that this is something the orgnaisation has been trying to do for the past five years, since the establishment of the African Economic Community. And according to Salim Ahmed Salim, the OAU secretary-general, inter-African economic cooperation will be receiving more and more of the OAU's attention over the years to come.
In his speech to last week's OAU meeting, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa argued that Africa should work to advance such internal economic relations, with an eye to eventually establishing a common African market. According to Moussa, Egypt is planning to host a regional economic conference next year to promote the objective of inter-African economic cooperation.
Nevertheless, the goal of economic -- and even human -- development will remain elusive, as long as the problem of Africa's external debt is left unsettled. According to the OAU secretary-general, this issue is often raised in international fora, but the possible solutions are almost always ignored.
The figures for 1997 show that Africa's external debt reached US$344.1 billion -- 64.7 per cent of the continent's overall GNP. In addition, debt servicing for that same year amounted to US$33 billion -- more than the annual budget of the OAU, which is (in the context, quite understandably) never fully paid up.
"There has to be a serious dialogue between Africa and the developing countries on this issue," said Salim.
An OAU-EU summit scheduled to convene in Cairo next year should provide an excellent opportunity for this Africa-debtors dialogue. However, judging by some of the views aired at last week's ministerial meeting, the convening of this summit could itself face a number of obstacles. In particular, some African countries are insisting that it must be an EU-All Africa summit, so as to allow the participation of Morocco, which resigned its OAU membership in protest at the organisation's recognition of the independence of the Western Sahara state, which Rabat regards as an integral part of Moroccan territory. Other countries, however, argue that the summit should remain strictly OAU-EU.
As one participant at last week's meeting put it: If the OAU has to be divided into two camps over this issue, then so be it.
This 'new' division will thus be added to the already lengthy list of disagreements that will have to be examined, and hopefully taken care of, by the OAU summit scheduled to be held this summer in Algiers.
