France pledges support for African mediation efforts
Text of report by Togolese government website, BBC Monitoring Africa.
Aug 30, 2005 (Lome) — The French minister for foreign affairs, Philippe Douste-Blazy, on Tuesday [30 August] once more explained that France, which is criticized for its activities in several of its ex-colonies like Cote d’ Ivoire and Togo, supported African mediation efforts which tended to be a substitute for its [France] diplomatic activity.
The international community must commit itself to “speeding up the resolution of crises” in Africa because “it concerns its own security as well” said the French foreign minister.
Speaking during the annual meeting of French envoys in Paris, Mr Douste-Blazy said “the international community must also see to it that the growth of Africa does no longer depend solely on development aid”.
“Today Africa epitomizes all the stakes and threats of the contemporary world“, the minister said. He, however, added that the “bugging down, crises and poverty are not an African fate” and that the African continent was marked by a growing dynamic”, notably an [economic] growth rate thrice that of Europe.
Mr Douste-Blazy stressed that Angola, southern Sudan, Sierra Leone and, perhaps Liberia, had come out of “never ending wars” and also touched on the emergence of “fragile zones” in west Africa and the Sahelian countries of Mauritania and Somalia.
Mr Douste-Blazy said, “because it concerns its own security, the international community must be firmly committed to speeding up the crisis resolution in Africa“. Mr Douste-Blazy urged: “Let us give priority to the integration of the African continent into the global economic and the financial circuits. Let us work to undo the unacceptable paradox that Africa is rich but Africans are poor.”
“France will continue to support the growing political commitment of regional mediation in particular that of the African Union in Cote d’Ivoire as in Sudan, in west Africa as in the Great Lakes region,” Mr Douste-Blazy said, while promising that France would continue to mobilize the international community to help Africa.