African leaders reject new EU trade deal

The European Union, compelled by the World Trade
Organisation to reach new trade deals with African nations
by Dec. 31, on Saturday faced accusations of dividing and
rushing its African partners.

The African Union's top official, AU Commission Chairman
Alpha Oumar Konare, criticised the EU for pushing through the
new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with individual
nations or groups of nations, to Africa's disadvantage.
"We must avoid playing certain African regions against each
other, or playing the countries of the same region against each
other," Konare told more than 70 EU and African leaders at a
rare summit meeting between the two continents.
"Otherwise it will no doubt be possible to push through a
victory of sorts, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory, based on
divisions at a tremendous cost to the rural African population
and to African industry."

In comments to reporters, Senegalese President Abdoulaye
Wade said the EU's insistence on pushing through the new deals
risked opening up a major split between Europe and Africa.
"Africa doesn't agree with the EPAs ... it is a bad
approach," Wade said.

Citing huge imbalances between the developed European
economies and weaker African economies, Wade said the end of
tariffs on imports from Europe proposed in the new trade deals
would mean loss of valuable customs receipts for the budgets of
African countries.

"No state can accept the amputation of its budget," he said.
Some EU countries worry that poor African countries' exports
will face higher import tariffs if they do not agree new deals
by the year end. Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said the EU
should give more time to the talks.

"The EU approach must be one of goodwill, flexibility and
understanding. We do not want any country to find itself worse
off as we go into 2008," Ahern told a news conference -- a view echoed by the Netherlands.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said the bloc could
not ask the WTO for more time to negotiate the new deals, many replacing colonial-era preferential trade arrangements which the WTO wants to end.

"HEAR THE MESSAGE"
Anti-poverty campaigners said Africa's general opposition to
the new trade accords had been forcefully expressed.
"If the European leadership and Peter Mandelson haven't
clearly heard the message from the Africans on trade, then they
need hearing aids," said Oliver Buston of the African advocacy
group Data.

Some African leaders fear the new deals will expose their
economies to too much competition and want an extension of the WTO waiver granted in 2000, to give more time for talks.
But Mandelson ruled that out.

"There is no question of my going back to the WTO and saying
I know that you have given us seven years ... (but) I'm afraid I
am simply going to ask you to renew the waiver and let us live
in sin for a while longer," he told BBC television.

More developed African countries such as Nigeria, Namibia or
Cameroon risk seeing their exports to the EU suffer from higher
tariffs from Jan. 1 if they do not sign up to the new EPAs.
Poorer nations face little change as they qualify for an EU
programme which would also allow them duty-free, quota-free
access to the 27-member bloc, except for sugar and rice.
Konare said EU talks with separate regions and countries
harked back to when European powers carved up Africa.

"It is time to bury definitively the colonial past based on
slavery and trading posts. We can no longer be merely exporters of raw materials. We can no longer accept being solely an import market for finished products," he said.

Reuters