-Caveat Lector- Annan Backs U.N. Blacklist of Non-Democratic Regimes UNITED NATIONS, (Oct. 4) IPS - Secretary-General Kofi Annan hopes that the United Nations will one day follow Africa's lead and bar all "unconstitutional" governments from high-level meetings of world political leaders. At a meeting of African leaders in Algiers in July, the 53-member Organization of African Unity (OAU) decided that heads of military regimes will be barred from its next summit. Annan called this action a "welcome change from an earlier era...governments which come to power through unconstitutional means no longer can expect to be received as equals in an assembly of elected heads of tate. "I am sure the day will come when the General Assembly of the United Nations will follow Africa's lead, and apply similarly stringent standards to all its (188) members," Annan said last week. At a two-day meeting of the Security Council -- convened to discuss the political and economic situation in Africa -- Annan said that one of the most pressing challenges of the time is how to achieve durable peace and sustainable development in Africa. The Secretary-General noted that although there was a widely-held view that Africa is a region in perpetual crisis, some parts of the continent had undergone dramatic changes for the better. Many African nations were liberalizing trade and exchange controls, privatizing moribund state industries, building up communications infrastructures and reforming their legal and regulatory frameworks, Annan said. "Africa possesses land and labor resources that foreign investors find attractive," he added. Annan also cited a recent report by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) that investment in Africa brought a higher return to American and Japanese companies than any other region of the world. Similar arguments were made by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who said that the net rate of return on investment in African countries remained higher than in other developing countries: 20-30 percent during 1990-1994, on average, as opposed to 16-18 percent for all developing nations. A majority of Africans also now lived under democratic systems of government, Annan noted. South Africa, for example, had successfully completed its second peaceful and democratic presidential election, and Mozambique would have its second presidential poll next month. Annan said the return to civilian rule in Nigeria had transformed that nation's prospects. Both Liberia and Mali have carried out large-scale destructions of small arms. Algeria also was taking important steps to move away from civil strife that has paralyzed its development and caused widespread suffering, Annan said. Despite these notable achievements, however, there remained places in Africa where governments and rebel groups persist in spending money on weapons they can ill afford for wars they should not fight. On the negative side, Annan cited countries where whole economies have come to depend on the perpetuation of war and where political power has been attained by violent, undemocratic means. There also were countries where poor governance deprived people of basic needs and where silence about AIDS exacerbated the deadly disease -- killing millions of Africans every year, Annan said. He also cited corruption -- which has thwarted economic growth -- rising debt burdens and declining international aid which made it extremely hard for African nations to attract investment and stave off marginalization from the global economy. "Afro-pessimism is a dead end," said Annan "and Africa fatigue is an affront to the very idea of a responsible international community." Ambassador Ibrahim Gambari of Nigeria told the Security Council that Africa was the least industrialized continent where some factories even operated at less than 30 percent of capacity. In the late 1970s, Africa's external debt stood at some $48.5 billion, while today the figure tops $300 billion. "The debt problem was a desperate disease for Africa; it required serious measures of debt relief and outright debt cancellation," according to Gambari. He said the world's response to the crisis in Kosovo should be compared with the response to the conflicts in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. For Kosovo, the international community spent some $1.50 a day per refugee, while African refugees in Rwanda and Sierra Leone received an equivalent of 11 cents. Gambari pointed out that, after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization military offensive in the Balkans, Western European countries and their allies pledged well over $2 billion for the reconstruction and rebuilding of Kosovo -- even when the estimated requirements were only about $500 million. Gambari quoted the Deputy Executive Director of the U.N. Children's Fund (UNCIEF) Stephen Lewis as saying it was morally repugnant for the West to spend $40 billion to fight a war in the Balkans, and less than one percent of that to save the lives of tens of millions in Africa. "These observations raise deeply troubling moral questions which the United Nations and the international community must address." ======================= Robert F. Tatman Computer Help Desk Desktop & LAN Services Systems Department Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. 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