“Begging won't make a future for Africa.” ~Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi
Monday, July 4, 2005 Updated at 2:34 PM EDT
Toronto Globe & Mail (Associated Press)
Sirte, Libya — Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told African countries to stop “begging” from the rich and to co-operate more in a blunt speech before a summit of the continents' leaders Monday ahead of a gathering the G8 countries due to focus on African debt relief.
Leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized countries meet Wednesday in Scotland, as protesters have been demanding action to curb African poverty. Over the weekend, rock stars and celebrities held concerts around the globe urging world leaders to eradicate the continent's debt.
Some of the 47 African heads of state gathered in this Libyan coastal city for the start of an African Union summit were pessimistic the G8 would come through with help.
The G8 countries are burdened with their own issues and “solving the world's and poor countries' issues are bigger than their ability,” Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir told The Associated Press.
But if it can, the G8 should “not only lift the interest on debt but the debts themselves, because they are the biggest catastrophe facing African countries,” he said.
“Pleading to the G8 to lift debts won't make a future for Africa,” Mr. Gadhafi said in his opening speech to the gathering of some 3,000 delegates. “We need co-operation between the big and the small countries in the world.
“Begging won't make a future for Africa.”
Olusegun Obasanjo with George W. Bush
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo praised the Libyan leader's blunt comments. “I liked Gadhafi's work," he said. "It seems he is back to his old way.”
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the summit in his address that the G8 summit's focus on Africa is “very welcome.”
“But it is the World Summit in two months' time that holds the greatest promise,” he said, referring to a gathering of world leaders in September during the opening of the UN General Assembly.
Mr. Annan wants that summit to review progress toward the goals set at the Millennium Summit in 2000 – most important, to cut by half the number of people living in dire poverty by 2015 – and to make key decisions about how the United Nations and other institutions can best deal with the new threats to global security.
“This is the most important African summit, ever for it concentrates on real problems in the continent which are security and poverty,” President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe told AP.
The African Union summit was expected to send an appeal to the G8 to help curb poverty and ensure security. The leaders are also to discuss conflicts on the continent, particularly the bloodshed in the western Sudanese region of Darfur crisis, and issue and international appeal to help the continent battle disease and famine.
They are also pushing for Africa to get at least one permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
Mr. Gadhafi proposed rotating a seat among the African countries, “every one or two years, and not to be given to any one particular country.”
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso and the Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa also attended the opening of the Sirte summit.
The 53-country African Union was created in 2002 as the successor to the Organization of African Unity.
Modelled after the European Union with an executive commission, a pan-African parliament and a court of justice, the African Union is based in Addis Ababa. Its focus is to spread democracy, human rights and economic development across the African continent.
Urbane Analysis: Notice that this crowd - which includes dictators, tyrants, thugs, thiefs, killers (and their enablers) omitted one organization (the World Bank) from their guest list? And why shouldn't they, given that their chief financier has publicly stated that 35% of spending on aid (alone) is lost to corruption - with responsibility for that resting squarely on the African leaders who stole it. Even good guys like Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is pushing against an endemically corrupt bureacracy (which is in turn enabled by western corporations willing to be the corruptors) need to speak out much more forcefully against the theft and graft which is the REAL cause of Africa's situation.
Because one thing is for certain, the African Union crowd will cry and whine about every BUT their complicity in Africa's crisis.
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