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Change Your Life! |
Clinton turns attention from economics to peace |
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August 29, 2000
ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) - After trying to convince Nigerians that their impoverished nation can embrace the computer economy, U.S. President Bill Clinton turned his attention to something that has proved almost as elusive: peace in Burundi. Clinton was flying Monday to Tanzania, where former South African President Nelson Mandela and other mediators have tried for weeks to craft a cease-fire in Burundi's seven-year civil war. Mandela had hoped Clinton could join 12 African leaders in witnessing a peace agreement between Burundi's Tutsi-controlled government and Hutu rebels. On the eve of the hoped-for agreement, rebels fired on Bujumbura, Burundi's capital. The Clinton administration, noting that some rebel groups have not come to the negotiating table, declined to connect the president's visit to a signing ceremony and cast it instead as a show of support for Mandela. "We see the Burundi peace process as ... ongoing," said Susan Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs. "The best we can hope for is an outcome that takes the process a large step down the road. In any case, the United States will continue to support the efforts of President Mandela." After a few hours in Tanzania, Clinton planned to meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo to discuss the status of the Israeli-Palestinian peace peace process, then head home. Clinton closed his weekend visit to Nigeria Sunday night with an address to business leaders, in which he announced the United States would make Nigerian exports eligible for duty-free treatment. He called Nigeria "America's important partner," and said the entrepreneurs could begin turning around Nigeria's reputation for corruption by investing in its people and diversifying the economy. "We have to reverse the practice that went along with the absence of democracy, ... but let's not get too carried away about the impact of the past on the future," Clinton said. "You can actually have dot-com companies in Nigeria. You can make money off the Internet here. Now, if Nigeria does its part, then Nigeria's trading partners and the wealthier countries of the world, especially, must do their part as well." Clinton promised continued U.S. support for Nigeria's transition to democracy but did not, as President Olusegun Obasanjo had hoped, agree to cancel or cut the nearly dlrs 1 billion U.S. portion of Nigeria's dlrs 32 billion foreign debt, a move that would require congressional approval. Before meeting the business leaders, Clinton visited a women's health center, where director John Ibekwe suggested he press African leaders to be more aggressive about battling AIDS. "With you as an advocate on our side, governments in Africa will do more than they have been doing," Ibekwe said. "In every country, in any culture, it is difficult, painful, at the very least embarrassing, to talk about the issues involved with AIDS," Clinton said. "But is it harder to talk about these things than to watch a child die of AIDS? ... We have to break the silence about how this disease spreads and how to prevent it." AIDS killed 2.8 million people worldwide last year, and is now the leading cause of death in Africa. The U.S. government will spend dlrs 9.4 million this year for AIDS and HIV infection prevention and care in Nigeria, dlrs 8.7 million for polio eradication and dlrs 2 million toward prevention of malaria. In sub-Saharan Africa, 13 million children have lost a parent to AIDS, and the disease is reducing life expectancies and dimming development hopes across the continent. About 2.6 million Nigerians, 5.4 percent of the population, are afflicted with AIDS. "AIDS can rob a country of its future," Clinton said. "I know you are not going to let that happen to Nigeria." Along with dealing with the heavy themes of AIDS and debt relief, Clinton also used the trip to get to know a country he deliberated bypassed on his last trip to Africa, in 1998, when it was under a military dictatorship. Led by a throng of singing children, he trudged through the Nigerian village of Ushafa on Sunday, past mud brick huts and flimsy metal sheds, with scrawny chickens scattering in his path. "We want to help you build your economy, educate your children and build a better life," he told villagers, wearing a cream-colored royal African robe given to him by the village chief.
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