No German troops in Sudan
F.A.Z. WEEKLY
Frankfurt, Jan 23, 2004 — South African President Thabo Mbeki sees no reason for German troops to take part in peacekeeping missions in Africa. “That is entirely unnecessary,” he said on Thursday after a meeting with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Pretoria.
The statement mirrored the chancellor’s own opinion, though Schröder did say that Germany would be willing to send experts to Sudan if a peace deal were reached to end that country’s 20-year civil war.
The meeting with Mbeki marked the start of Schröder’s two-day visit to South Africa, the second-last leg of a seven-day trip that started in Ethiopia on Sunday and was followed by a stop in Kenya ahead of Schröder’s arrival in South Africa. The trip ends on Saturday with a visit to Ghana.
It is Schröder’s first extended official trip to Africa, a continent not usually considered a political priority by German governments. The Social Democratic Party-Green coalition, however, has shown increasing interest in the continent of late, with Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer traveling to Mali, Namibia and South Africa in October, and President Johannes Rau scheduled to visit Nigeria and Tanzania in March.
The official purpose of Schröder’s trip, which takes the chancellor to four countries that have become stabilizing political factors in their respective regions, is to promote Germany’s economic and security interests in Africa. A government official said the trip aimed to boost German influence in the region and to underline the necessity of successful reform programs in African countries looking for aid from Germany and to prevent African problems from spilling over into Europe, for example in the shape of terrorism or waves of refugees.
Schröder said he and Mbeki also talked “extensively” about the economic and political crisis in neighboring Zimbabwe under the regime of President Robert Mugabe.
“I made clear that I consider the regime and its political practices unacceptable,” the chancellor said, adding that Germany backed the sanctions imposed by the European Union against the country. But while Western governments have repeatedly criticized Mbeki for what they describe as his overly indulgent attitude toward Mugabe, Schröder said he did not believe that “Germany can play an active role in this conflict.”
Schröder called for a deepening of economic relations between Germany and South Africa, the continent’s most powerful economy. Schröder is traveling with a 23-member business delegation including car maker DaimlerChrysler’s chief executive, Jürgen Schrempp, and Lufthansa head Wolfgang Mayrhuber.
German-South African trade volume reached EUR7.6 billion, or $9.6 billion, in 2002. About 450 German companies are represented in South Africa. Germans now make up the second most important group of tourists in South Africa, after the British, and the number of German property buyers in and around Cape Town has increased so much that the region is now sometimes called “Majorca on the Cape” – a rather pointed reference to the Germans’ massive invasion of the Spanish holiday island.
The intended highlight of Schröder’s trip, a meeting with the 85-year-old first president of democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela, will not take place. The Nobel Peace Prize recipient told Schröder that he would not be back from his holiday in time. It was not immediately clear if Mandela’s cancellation was due to a health problem.
Jan. 23, 2004
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung