Chinese president in the spotlight over Sudan
Feb 2, 2007 (MONROVIA) — President Hu Jintao of China was to see the war-scarred nation of Liberia, ahead of the most important stage of his African tour when he meets Sudan’s leaders.
Under pressure to use China’s influence on Sudan over the Darfur conflict, while at the same time needing Sudan’s oil, the Chinese leader will be under the international spotlight when he goes to Khartoum on Friday.
Hu was due in Liberia on Thursday for the second leg of his tour aimed at winning a larger share of Africa’s oil and mineral resources.
The streets and war-blackened buildings in the oceanside capital of Monrovia were brightly festooned with Chinese and Liberian flags in Hu’s honour.
Liberia is traditionally a strong US ally. But Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf expressed gratitude for Beijing’s reconstruction aid and Chinese peacekeepers in a UN force in the west African country striving to recover from more than a decade of civil war.
“Liberians will never forget the friendship of Chinese peacekeeping soldiers,” she told Chinese journalists ahead of Hu’s arrival, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.
About 500 Chinese troops are in the UN mission in Liberia. China has also built a stadium and a sugar mill among its infrastructure projects in the country.
Sirleaf expressed hope that Hu’s visit would bring good opportunities to Liberia. “We do not want just to be one-sided — we want to give,” she said Wednesday.
Trade between the two countries shot up by 155 percent last year from 2005 to 375 million dollars, according to Xinhua.
Hu’s visit is the first by a Chinese head of state since the two countries re-established diplomatic ties in 2003. Liberia previously had ties with Taiwan. But Sirleaf attended the China-Africa summit held in Beijing last November in a sign of the new links.
The Chinese president began his eight-nation African tour, his third since coming to power in 2003, in Cameroon on Tuesday.
He approved grants and loans to Cameroon worth more than 54 million dollars (41.5 million euros), Cameroonian national radio reported.
Hu and his counterpart Paul Biya also signed a draft agreement on scrapping Cameroon’s debt to China and a series of health and educational accords, the report added.
Emphasising its commitment to Africa, China said this week it would write off debts owed by 33 African countries as part of a multi-billion-dollar pledge made last year.
Cooperation between China and Africa was going to “rise in volume and size to reach the highest levels and make a greater contribution to the well-being of the Chinese and African people,” Hu said at a gala dinner with Biya.
But Beijing’s policy towards Africa has drawn concern in the West because of its close links with hardline regimes in countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.
Rights groups and some Western governments hope Hu will use his two-day stay in Sudan to press for action over the Darfur conflict, which the United States has called “genocide”.
Beijing, by far the biggest foreign economic investor in Sudan, is thought to be in a position to persuade Khartoum to accept UN peacekeepers in Darfur.
“If the Chinese put some pressure on Khartoum, it might have some potential,” said Larry Rossin of the Save Darfur coalition, who recently travelled to Khartoum with US envoy Bill Richardson.
“I hope they can use their influence … to press President Omar al-Beshir to implement in good faith the hybrid peacekeeping agreement,” Rossin told AFP.
The Chinese president is also due to visit Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Mozambique and the Seychelles during his 12-day tour.
(AFP)