Posted on 07/16/2002 2:46:57 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
NADI, Fiji - The European Union wants a group of poor nations to agree to a common position on negotiating free trade deals with Brussels, an EU official said Monday.
But observers said the unwieldy nature of the 78-nation grouping of African, Caribbean and Pacific island nations makes any unified position from the summit unlikely.
The third African Caribbean Pacific summit was to start Tuesday at a palm-fringed resort in Fiji's palm-fringed city of Nadi, as the member states prepare to negotiate free trade agreements with the EU in September.
According to the African Caribbean Pacific or ACP secretariat, about 63 national leaders are attending, including South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Two of its most controversial leaders - Cuba's Fidel Castro and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe - will not be there.
The European Union is telling the ACP - which accounts for more than 650 million people and includes 40 of the world's poorest countries - that if they want to keep getting European aid, they will have to start removing their trade barriers to Europe's exports.
Under an agreement signed between the group's members and the EU in 2000 at Cotonou in the African state of Benin, the European Union is also linking trade and aid to ACP states which impose safeguards to prevent corruption.
The head of the European Union delegation in Fiji, Frans Baan, said the summit would push for the 78 countries to give ACP representative a broad mandate to negotiate with the European Union in September.
"We are very hopeful that they will get that mandate," Baan told The Associated Press.
However, Stewart Firth, a professor of Pacific and international relations at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji's capital, Suva, believes a common negotiating position across the 78 poorer nations will be almost impossible to achieve.
Firth said a likely result of the summit is that the member nations will divide into African, Caribbean and Pacific blocs, and reach three separate deals with the EU.
The only likely agreement from all ACP members at the summit is a broad commitment to improve anti-corruption measures and work toward more open accountable government, he said.
There are also differences between the African, Caribbean and Pacific blocs over EU demands on how aid should be delivered.
According to Ulafala Aiavao, a spokesman for the Pacific Island Forum - a grouping of 14 Pacific Island members of the ACP - the Pacific states accept European Union demands that aid should be delivered through nongovernment organizations and the private sector, rather than given direct to national governments.
He said African and Caribbean states were less prepared to accept that demand.
The poorer countries' governments will also be discussing hoped-for compensation from the EU for the revenue they will lose when they start reducing tariff barriers.
The ACP leaders are expected to present European Union Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy with a list of compensation demands after he arrives at the summit Wednesday.
Host nation Fiji will use the summit to show the world it has moved on from its May 2000 nationalist coup, and is again under democratic rule.
The nation held elections last year to replace the former government, toppled by indigenous Fijian gunmen, and is working hard to rebuild tourism and other key industries that were nearly destroyed by the unrest.
I guess the two despots decided to sit this one out in Havana. "Teacher, Anti-colonialist, Friend of Cuba" - Mugabe arrives in Havana [Full Text] HAVANA - Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, was to arrive in Cuba later Monday for a five-day official visit, the government announced. Mugabe, increasingly the subject of international criticism and sanctions following his disputed re-election in March, was to hold official talks Tuesday with President Fidel Castro. He also was to tour numerous educational and scientific centers during his stay. The visit was announced Monday morning in the Communist Party daily Granma, in a story entitled: "Mugabe: Teacher, Anti-colonialist, Friend of Cuba"
Mugabe last visited Cuba in April 2000, when he headed his country's delegation at the summit of the Group of 77 developing nations held in Havana.
Mugabe, 78, has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. As his popularity has waned, he has imposed curbs on journalists and opposition parties, and many of his critics have been attacked or threatened with prosecution.
After March elections that independent observers said were riddled with irregularities, the 15-nation European Union imposed an embargo against Mugabe's government. The United States also has imposed sanctions.
Zimbabwe's government has targeted about 95 percent of farms owned by the country's white minority for seizure, saying it wants to redistribute them among landless blacks. The often violent program of seizures has been condemned by Western governments and has contributed to widespread food shortages.
Mugabe - Zimbabwe court rules seizing of white-owned land legal
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