CHRISTOPHE DE ROQUEFEUIL, Gaborone | Tuesday
US SECRETARY of State Madeleine Albright has wrapped up a swansong tour of three sub-Saharan African countries in Botswana with a call for the next US president not to neglect Africa.
The administration of Democratic President Bill Clinton saw Africa as “vitally important to the United States,” Albright told a press conference in Gaborone after visiting South Africa and Mauritius.
“It would be a tragedy if Africa did not have that same role for whoever is the next president of the United States,” she said. “The issues that happen here concern all of us.”
Africa was long neglected by Washington, but Clinton visited the continent twice, and this tour is Albright’s fourth as secretary of state.
Albright, who will leave her job in six weeks when the next administration takes over, refused to join the debate on the inconclusive US presidential election.
She nonetheless let a few barbs fly in the general direction of Republican candidate George W Bush, who has reservations about US engagements abroad, particularly on humanitarian and peacekeeping missions.
“I believe that the United States is not true to its principles if we do not consider humanitarian disasters as something that needs to be dealt with, and humanitarian interventions are very much within the interest of the United States,” Albright declared.
She described the HIV/Aids pandemic, which is hitting sub-Saharan Africa harder than any other part of the world, with 70% of the 36 million sufferers living in the region, as “a security issue”.
Botswana is the world’s worst-affected country, with 18 to 20% of the population HIV-positive.
The disease threatened to destabilise the politics and economies of entire countries in Africa, Albright warned.
She visited Aids research centres and met patients in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, and in Gaborone.
Her talks with South African and Botswanan leaders focused largely on conflicts in the region and the tense situation in Zimbabwe following parliamentary elections in June preceded by political violence which left at least 34 people dead. – AFP