South African Press Association
May 28, 2003

Johannesburg — The G8 group of industrialised nations might make some announcement during its upcoming summit regarding support for regional peacekeeping initiatives in Africa, acting director-general of foreign affairs Abdul Minty said on Wednesday.

From the G8’s Cologne summit in 1999 there had been declarations about how it would like to lend such assistance, but there had been no tangible programmes, except for some bilateral ones, he told reporters in Pretoria.

“The fact that African countries have intervened and tried to resolve a number of conflicts and the successes they have had are now creating an atmosphere in which the G8 will be ready at the summit to consider further assistance to regional efforts.”

Three to four years ago there was reluctance to engage in any peacekeeping operations in Africa. But that had changed with the United Nations’ endorsement of the African mission in Burundi and the functioning of the UN peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Minty said.

“At the summit… for the first time African leaders will be able to say: ‘This is what we have achieved in Angola… (and) in the DRC, now we have the following reconstruction and development programmes which you can help us with.’

“Therefore there is a greater willingness on the part of the G8 to help Africa as it is seen to be making its own efforts, now matter how weak and faltering… in a collective manner.”

The assistance was likely to be in the form of commitments by individual countries for financial support, training and capacity building, Minty said.

The G8 summit is to take place in Evian, France from Sunday to Tuesday. On Wednesday, heads of state and government of Africa, including President Thabo Mbeki, were attending a New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) implementation committee meeting in Nigeria.

They would decide which issues to prioritise to present to the G8, Minty said.

The G8 would spend half a day on its enlarged dialogue, which would include the heads of state of Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Brazil, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland and, for the first time, China.

The other half of the day would be spent with the African leaders on Nepad, the acting DG said.

This was now the fourth engagement with the G8 on Nepad.

“The meetings are coming closer and closer to looking at specific issues instead of generalities.”

Minty was asked if Iraq and concerns about the world economy might not push Nepad far down the G8’s agenda.

He said estimates of Iraq’s debt varied between US127-billion and US400-billion.

“If the United States administration takes the view that all those debts have to be written off then that obviously means… there will not be much left for debt servicing or writing off debt for African countries or developing countries as a whole.”

However, the fact that the G8 had still arranged a special meeting about Nepad was encouraging. Since 2000 there had been a shift of focus by the G8 to include the south, Minty said.

“(French) President (Jacques) Chirac has made a very strong statement that for him Africa is a priority.”

Chirac is to chair the G8 summit.

Terrorism and the setbacks in the global economy were likely to be high on the summit’s agenda, Minty said.

For the developing countries, the main issues would include debt relief, overseas development assistance and World Trade Organisation negotiations, he said.