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Chissano Would Support US Role in Liberia

Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
NEWS
July 12, 2003
Posted to the web July 13, 2003
Maputo
Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, incoming chairperson of the African
Union, on Saturday gave qualified approval to the dispatch of US troops to
Liberia.
Asked about "US intervention" in Liberia at a press conference at the end of
the AU summit, Chissano replied "if it were an intervention, I'd be against
it".
But he did not think the proposed US role could be defined as an
"intervention". "What will happen in Liberia is that the contingent is a peace
keeping force led by ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) which
will deploy the first troops", he said. "Thereafter the US will come. They will
come because we, the Africans, have asked them to come, because the various
factions in Liberia have asked for it. So we can't object to it".
But in future, Chissano added, "we must make efforts so that Africa is
increasingly self-sufficient in peace-keeping operations".
Chissano denied that the summit had been dominated by the various conflicts
raging in Africa. For him, the most important theme discussed at the gathering
was the implementation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).
The priority of the Mozambican presidency of the AU would be NEPAD, he pledged.
He declined to establish priorities within NEPAD. "NEPAD is a whole - there's
no parcelling into bits and pieces", he said. "It's like a body - it all moves
at once".
Asked about the need to ensure democratic elections in Africa, Chissano replied
that nowadays the great majority of African countries, despite a wide variety
of political systems, did hold regular elections. The obvious exception was
Libya, which "makes its own democracy in its own way".
If the same leaders stayed in power for decades in various African countries,
"that's not because of a lack of elections", he said.
Chissano thought NEPAD would "show the way through its Peer Review Mechanism,
which is set to improve the performance of states in the development of
democracy".
Asked why the Zimbabwean crisis had not been on the summit agenda, Chissano
replied "the agenda is drafted through consultations prior to the summit, and
those consultations advised us to keep Zimbabwe in the forum where it is
currently being handled, because everything indicated that good results were
being achieved".
When a BBC reporter asked Chissano if he could summarise the achievements of
the summit in 30 seconds, he replied that he needed much less than 30 seconds,
for the answer was "More coherence, more solidarity".

   

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