Posted on 04/20/2002 3:19:39 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast - Alone among African leaders in condemning Zimbabwe's elections, Senegal's outspoken president urged Friday that Zimbabwe's people nevertheless be spared international sanctions and aid cuts.
"Presidents are in passing, but the people are permanent," President Abdoulaye Wade told The Associated Press from Senegal's capital, Dakar.
Wade evoked the long-term good of development aid for the people of Zimbabwe and elsewhere.
"Airports, road, schools, universities - this has nothing to do with a political regime," he said.
The European Union (news - web sites) is thinking about toughening sanctions on Zimbabwe after President Robert Mugabe won re-election last month through what international monitors said was vote-rigging and orchestrated political violence.
The EU already has frozen development aid to Zimbabwe.
The United States, calling the vote "fatally flawed," froze defense contracts and U.S. bank accounts of Zimbabwe leaders.
Wade, a 76-year-old leader elected in 2000 after more than two decades in opposition, emerged as the only African leader to condemn the vote.
Last summer, he stood nearly as alone among African leaders in dismissing the idea of European reparation for past African enslavement - asking if his own family, former slave-holders like many in Africa, should also pay.
On Zimbabwe, he said Friday, "For me, my problem is: Did the people of Zimbabwe express their free choice of election? My answer is 'no.'"
His remarks came as Wade emerged from a week in which he spearheaded African leaders' successful mediation of Madagascar's violent three-month election impasse.
After three days of room-to-room shuttling by himself and four other presidents in a Dakar hotel, Madagascar's two rival presidents agreed to a temporary power-sharing plan.
"Something very important on that is the consideration Africans have for elder persons," he said of his own role in that effort.
"There are very few people who speak frankly, and generally we succeed," he said.
The peace-making came on the sidelines of an African leaders' summit in which heads of state laid strategy for a promised massive infusion of Western aid.
Wade broke from one key provision of African leaders' proposal for encouraging good government among themselves - a demand of the wealthy Group of Eight nations promising the aid.
The proposal, endorsed by influential Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, calls for a "peer review" in which African leaders themselves keep leaders like Zimbabwe's president in line.
"Maybe if there is a problem, they call the head of state ... and maybe scold him," he said.
"I am not very optimistic for the good functioning of the system," he said. "In general, we have little capacity to put pressure on a president."
The critical voice belonged to Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal, who was elected president two years ago in this West African nation after struggling in the opposition for 26 years. In two years, despite having taken some unpopular positions on a continent that has long valued solidarity, Mr. Wade (pronounced wahd) has emerged through the force of his ideas and personality as one of sub-Saharan Africa's three leading spokesmen. (The other two are the presidents of the much more powerful South Africa and Nigeria.) "Mr. Mugabe did not respect the rules," Mr. Wade said. "The opposition could not wage its campaign. There were many deaths. Electoral laws were changed days before the election. We can't call that an election."
"I was in the opposition for too long to forget the opposition as soon as I arrived in power," he added. "I refuse to belong to this trade union of presidents. Mugabe or not Mugabe is not my concern. My concern was what the people of Zimbabwe wanted." Mr. Wade spoke during a recent late-afternoon interview inside the presidential palace. The most conspicuous objects in his simple office were models of pet projects now underway: educational centers for toddlers; a cyber village to enhance Senegal's commitment to high technology; a university of the future where, the president says, African students will be able to take courses in "real time" from "Harvard, M.I.T. and Princeton," thanks to satellites and computers.***
I can understand the plea, but not the logic. The same issue pertains to arafart and hussein: they are depostic dictator's who brutalize their people at will, yet the West is begged for more aid, which is then stolen by the dictator which gives him more resources to continue the brutality.
As O'reilly would say, am I wrong?
Jackson, McKinny, Sharpton, Wade.
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