23 July 1999 Vol 40 No 15 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL ALGERIA 3 ORGANISATION OF AFRICAN UNITY Alger l'Africaine President Bouteflika reestablished Tougher talk Algeria's anti-colonial credentials when he hosted the OAU summit Africa's big three - Algeria, Nigeria and South Africa - focused the and marketed his country as a summit on peace talks and ending military rule dynamic economy at the junction of Africa, Europe and the Middle For once, the Organisation of African Unity caught the mood of the continent, balanced uneasily East. He wanted to show visitors between hope and despair. Hope that, after shaky ceasefire agreements in Congo-Kinshasa and that national reconciliation was Sierra Leone, the Algiers OAU summit (12-16 July) might progress towards resolving the conflicts working and convinced many. ripping through over one-fifth of Africa’s 53 states. Despair that good intentions are far from realisation, as economic weakness persists and old conflicts linger on in Angola and Sudan. Yet by FRANCE/OIL 4 the standards of summits in general and OAU summits in particular, it was constructive. Zambia’s President Frederick Chiluba flew off to Congo-K to persuade the quarrelling rebel Totally elfin factions to sign the 10 July Lusaka peace accord; Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo flew to For decades the oil company Elf meet embattled President José Eduardo dos Santos in Luanda; United Nations Secretary General Aquitaine has played a key role for Kofi Annan flew back to New York (via Slovakia) with proposals for UN help in peacemaking in French policy in Africa. After its Congo, Sierra Leone and Eritrea-Ethiopia. profitability dropped sharply this A ‘big three’ alliance of elected Presidents - Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Nigeria’s Obasanjo year, the French government encouraged an unsolicited and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki - set out to rebuild respect for the OAU. The three have takeover bid by France's TotalFina international credibility, powerful contacts and the resolve to try to end Africa’s cycle of wars and to stop Elf falling prey to British or impoverishment. Helped by Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and Uganda’s President Yoweri American predators. Museveni, the trio set the style for the summit: more energetic peacemaking in the Horn, a tougher line against putschists and a stronger African voice in the UN and the World Trade Organisation. MALI 5 A red card for putschists Obasanjo in particular pushed the anti-coup line. Chiluba, who narrowly missed being overthrown Power cuts in October 1997 (AC Vol 38 No 22) backed the proposal. The anti-coup proponents had wanted President Konaré wants to go down unlimited retrospective action against any putschist government but the rule was watered down to in history and Premier Keïta wants apply to governments coming to power through force since the Harare summit of 1997. OAU to succeed him as president. Both Spokesperson Ibrahim Daggash explained that the OAU, as Africa’s political referee, had shown may be disappointed. Konaré's a ‘yellow card’ to military regimes; if they don’t return to constitutional rule before next year’s OAU reputation is fading fast and the summit, they will be shown the red card and suspended from membership. The targets are the latest favoured contender for the presidency is former military ruler crop of successful coup-makers in Niger, Guinea-Bissau and Comoros. Longer standing coup- Toumani Touré. makers such as Togo’s Gnassingbé Eyadéma and Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, whose elections and attempts to legitimise their rule haven’t won international acceptance, are off the hook. The ruling affects Congo-Brazzaville’s President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who overthrew Pascal CAPE VERDE 6 Lissouba’s elected government in October 1997 after a five month battle. Obasanjo’s old friend, Micro-state former United States’ President Jimmy Carter, has offered to mediate and has already met Lissouba in Atlanta. Sassou wouldn’t usually jump at such an offer but Carter’s mediation may save struggles him an OAU suspension. Murkier still, President Laurent-Désiré Kabila in Congo-K seized power The contest to succeed the ailing by force in May 1997 but is now recognised as legitimate by the Southern African Development Prime Minister Veiga is heating up Community. For now, he is too important in the peace negotiations to be suspended from any ahead of his planned retirement regional body. next February. The technocratic The new rule may push military leaders into negotiations to shore up their legitimacy. However, candidate Vice-Premier Do Rosário faces a populist challenge the summit agreed no mechanism to assess which regimes were breaking the rule or what they must from Mayor of Praia, Jaquinto do to restore constitutional legitimacy. That judgment is left to Secretary General Salim Ahmed Santos. Salim, whose ten years in the post have been marked by an unwillingness to offend military leaders - not even Jammeh or Nigeria’s late General Sani Abacha. OAU insiders say the Secretariat will POINTERS 8 have to follow the Commonwealth lead and set up a ministerial action group to adjudicate on the military regimes. Since the demise of the Commonwealth’s last military regime - Nigeria’s - its Gold, Libya and officials are considering a new democracy-policing role for their ministerial action group, including tougher human rights codes and rights for opposition political groupings - ideas unacceptable to the Sudan old-style OAU. Other suggested sanctions include a general withdrawal of diplomatic recognition. Robbing Peter; Tripoli calling; and arranged marriages. 23 July 1999 Africa Confidential Vol 40 No 15 Loans to military regimes from the OAU-associated African Chinery-Hesse and Food and Agriculture Organisation DG Jacques Development Bank might be suspended but that might not be Diouf. Other high-level guests included Palestine’s President supported by the ADB’s technocratic managers in Abidjan. Yasser Arafat, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Prompted by its host, Bouteflika, the summit passed a resolution Susan Rice (trying for peace in the Horn, Congo and Sierra Leone) outlawing direct and indirect support for terrorism. Among the and Commonwealth Secretary General Emeka Anyaoku, watching targets are the Islamist militias which trouble the Algerian and the OAU follow his own organisation’s line on military regimes. Egyptian governments, with backing from Sudan’s National Islamic Front. Undaunted, Sudan’s Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Plain talk . up to a point Ismail claimed recent improvements in relations with Cairo and Non-African foreign ministers included Iraq’s Mohamed Said al Algiers. He said that Sudan’s President Omer Hassan Ahmed el Sahaf, seeking African support to end sanctions; Ireland’s David Beshir had agreed with Bouteflika about restoring full diplomatic Andrews, accompanying former President Robinson; and relations and had ‘made progress’ at a meeting with Egypt’s Ukraine’s Borys Tarassyuk, hoping to ‘correct perceptions spread President Mubarak (although Cairo still blames the NIF regime for by commercial rivals’ that his country sells guns and mercenaries the assassination attempt on Mubarak in Addis Ababa in July 1995, to rebels. ‘None of these allegations made by the Western press has AC Vol 36 No 14). Along with the usual denials, Minister Mustafa been proved yet’, Tarassyuk told Africa Confidential triumphantly. (known to Sudanese as ‘Mr. Smile’) issued a grandiose statement Besieged Iranian President Mohammed Khatami sent his Director pleading for the peaceful resolution of Africa’s wars. It curiously General for Africa, Hamid Moayyer, to ‘promote dialogue’ between omitted to mention one of the oldest and most deadly, Sudan’s own. the OAU and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (of which More concretely, the summit moved negotiations between Eritrea over 60 per cent of African states are members). and Ethiopia over the disputed Badme border territory a few metres It was an OAU of more plain speaking. ‘Africa is sick!’ declared forward after several false starts. Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi, new OAU Chairperson Bouteflika. President Mbeki urged that ‘we attending his first OAU summit since 1977, had failed to help when do not avoid the truth because we want to be polite to one another’. Eritrea’s President Issayas Afeworki failed to arrive in Tripoli for Obasanjo was blunter still: ‘We must not have any excuses, pre-OAU talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. But diplomatic or expedient, for sitting down with those whose actions in Algiers, OAU officials insist they made progress by persuading have clearly shown that they do not deserve respectability.’ Even both sides to accept the OAU negotiating framework at the summit. arch-diplomat Kofi Annan called on African governments to cut It provides for both to return to the territory they held prior to the ‘weapons and ammunition purchases to 1.5 per cent of gross official start of the war on 6 May 1998. Acceptance of the national product and... impose zero growth on their defence budgets framework now means mediation will be led by a smaller group for the next ten years.’ headed by Bouteflika (more flexible than the grandiose heads of The big chill came from ECA chief Amoako, a Ghanaian. He state committee led last year by Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré). said there was economic growth in only two of Africa’s five sub- Much will depend on how much time the diplomatically talented regions last year and that the economies contracted in the three sub- former Foreign Minister can put into these sensitive negotiations. regions where about 75 per cent of Africans lived. War and The framework agreement should make it harder for either side political instability were key reasons for this economic decline, he to return to battle. But that depends on each agreeing on what the said, adding that unless the OAU’s member governments moved to deal means.