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European-African summit to focus on rights, governance |
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April 5, 2000
CAIRO, APR 4 (AP) - Eager to capitalize on the suspension of sanctions against his country, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi met with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder Tuesday morning on the fringes of a summit of African and European nations.
Afterward, Schroeder said the meeting was "cordial and productive." Details on the content of their discussions were not immediately available.
Gadhafi, emerging from decades of international ostracism, wants to project himself to Africans as a man willing to champion their causes. But with economic benefits in sight, he also wants to build on growing relations with Europe following the suspension of U.N. sanctions last year.
The embargo on oil industry parts and air travel was suspended after Libya last year handed over for trial two suspects in the bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. That prompted visits by European business executives seeking trade with the oil-rich state.
On the sidelines of the Cairo summit, Gadhafi has met Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission; Italian Premier Massimo D'Alema and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, in addition to Schroeder.
Even so, just a night before, Gadhafi was denouncing Europe in his trademark style.
"Leave us alone as your ideas and culture differ from ours," Gadhafi said in a speech following Monday's opening session, according to the text released Tuesday by the official Libyan news agency. "Africa needs food and medicine. It does not need lessons on democracy."
Still, on Tuesday's agenda for the second day of a summit between the representatives of 52 African and 15 European Union nations were the sensitive issues of human rights, good governance and the rule of law.
The EU has said it will stress these social issues as a condition for cooperation with African nations. Some Africans consider this colonial-style lecturing.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe responded Monday to British criticism that Zimbabwe officials have not done enough to protect opposition protesters from attacks or white-owned farms from unauthorized squatters.
"Britain has no right to try to suggest to the rest of the world that we are a failure," he said. "We are not the only developing country with problems."
But after meeting Mugabe later Monday, British Foreign Minister Robin Cook outlined Britain's hopes for Zimbabwe's postponedlegislative elections, now set for mid-May.
"What I want is for the people of Zimbabwe to have a chance to choose the government themselves and to have a free and fair chance to do so," Cook told reporters.
Gadhafi, who had reportedly been urged by Egyptian host President Hosni Mubarak to tone down his anti-European rhetoric, denounced Europe for enslaving Africans in the past and for current joint development and defense projects he described as "imperialistic."
Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, in a working session on economic and social issues, told his European colleagues it is difficult for African nations to do everything by the democratic book and still pursue economic reform and development.
"African countries are now in the middle of very painful reform measures, the magnitude and diversity of which, in the case of Tanzania, no industrialized democratic government could even contemplate in the short time frame we are bound to," he said. "Yet, we have garnered the political will to persevere."
A final declaration and a plan of action to be approved Tuesday by summit participants include a dozen points on general issues of human rights and democratic principles, from the condemnation of genocide to the need to combat gender discrimination.
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