In Britain the new Kenya lost one of its most sympathetic advocates with the muddled resignation of Clare Short as International Development Secretary over the war on Iraq...
In June Colonel John Garang's delegation sorely missed the hard won interest of British International Development Secretary Clare Short...
Since the Machakos talks began in June 2002 it has got away with: presenting the war as the only issue; making people think a lasting peace can be established without democracy or human rights; massacring civilians to clear oil areas in Upper Nile; air bombardment of civilians in Darfur; getting rid of the effective United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur Gerhart Baum; building the Western Upper Nile oil road it had agreed under Machakos to halt; convincing foreigners it wants only power and money not an Islamist revolution; convincing outsiders it alone represents Sudan Sudanese and Islam; convincing people its 'project' has failed so peace is inevitable; convincing Westerners and Arabs that what Hassan el Turabi stands for is no longer NIF policy; making people forget it that it had offered the south self-determination (even secession: infisal) in 1989 and the 1997 Khartoum Peace Accord (in February 2003 Britain's then Development Secretary Clare Short called it a 'breakthrough'); transforming the debate about secular Sudan into one about the capital or part of it; establishing moral equivalence at Machakos with the far less powerful Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement; taking over the economy in the guise of privatisation: we hear hundreds of NIF companies are moving to Indonesia and Malaysia; convincing the International Monetary Fund and World Bank it's broke when it has the oil-money it needs for military expenditure; the Bank's Ishaq Diwan enthuses about a post-war 'quick impact programme'; giving the impression it was reluctant host to Usama bin Laden and Al Qaida not part of the same Islamist strategy; making gestures of anti-terrorist cooperation; confirming Egypt's belief that an independent south threatens the Nile; convincing the Arab world the Sudan war is against Arabism and Islam...
Bush liked Kagame instinctively; and Britain's new International Development Minister Baroness Valerie Amos will maintain the strong support for Kigali of her predecessor Clare Short...
Vol 44 No 10 |
- RWANDA
- UGANDA
The host the then International Development Secretary Clare Short was presumably planning her resignation from Prime Minister Tony Blair's government...
The Cape Town summit did not tackle other bilateral tensions between these former allies and Mbeki appeared as mystified as Britain's Development Minister Clare Short about the reasons for the Uganda-Rwanda antagonism...
Britain's International Development Secretary Clare Short (who rescinded her threat to resign over the Iraq war) is Rwanda's best Western ally but advised Kigali on 14 March to stay out of the current fighting in Ituri...
UK International Development Secretary Clare Short visited this week and the US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner visited in the first week of January...
Yet if Kufuor had signed up to the Consortium's loan his government would have forfeited backing from the IMF and the World Bank according to British International Development Secretary Clare Short...
Similar arguments for building and strengthening African states have emerged from Britain's Department for International Development whose Minister Clare Short lobbies keenly alongside her colleagues: Norway's Hilde Johnson Germany's Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul the Netherlands' Eveline Herfkens and (token male) Sweden's Jan Karlsson...