July 15, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

JOHANNESBURG: He didn’t hand out dollars for economic relief, give a quick answer to calls to send peacekeepers to Liberia or end trade barriers that African farmers say stop them making a decent living.

But President George W. Bush’s whirlwind first trip to black Africa that ended on Saturday reflected a major policy shift toward a continent he dismissed as outside US security interests during his 2000 election campaign.

“With these kind of visits, if you look for them to have any dramatic kind of signing or announcement, you are going to be disappointed,” said Ross Herbert, senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs.

“But there seems to be a strategic reawakening to the view that Africa matters,” Herbert said.

Bush has reassessed Africa’s strategic importance due to growing US reliance on its oil and intelligence that its porous borders and swathes of lawless territory could be attractive to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. He wants to lessen dependence on a volatile Middle East for oil.

Ending Liberia’s civil war became the burning issue on the tour, but despite being pressed by one African leader after another he said no decision would be made on sending US troops until military experts in the West African state reported back.

Between talks on Liberia, the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe, the fight against Africa’s AIDS scourge, the US-led “war on terror” and trade were high on the agenda as Bush swept through five countries in five days.

Bush pressed very little flesh among ordinary Africans and amid the rhetoric and back-slapping with the leaders he met, it was hard for many on the continent to see what was achieved.

“They arrived in Hollywood style on the envied Air Force One, stirred up controversy and then flew off, leaving many South Africans bewildered about what exactly they came to do,” said South Africa’s mass-circulation Sowetan Sunday World paper.

Bush did reaffirm a commitment to get the US Congress to approve a $15 billion programme to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean. He also promoted a new $100 million plan to help East African states fight Al Qaeda and other militant groups.

AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT: The Bush roadshow overshadowed the African Union’s annual summit in Mozambique last week, drawing attention away from efforts to create an African peacekeeping force and taking the leaders of Nigeria and Uganda away at crucial times.

Jakkie Cilliers, executive director of the Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria, said the timing was unfortunate.

But Cilliers said: “A US president coming to Africa is important. It did allow Africa to push the United States on Liberia...(but) the United States will try to avoid military involvement in Africa.”

Leaders across Africa urged Bush to send troops and provide funds to help secure a fragile ceasefire to end nearly 14 years of almost non-stop civil war in Liberia, founded in the 19th century by freed black slaves from America.

Bush’s cautious stance on sending troops to join a planned mainly African peacekeeping mission may owe much to heavy US commitments in Iraq and Washington’s bloody exit when it made its last African foray in Somalia 10 years ago.

African Union leaders were unable to agree on plans for an African peace force for the continent, and the body’s chairman, Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, said the West’s failure to honour funding pledges was prolonging war in Burundi.

“The United States and Britain promised funding for peacekeepers from Mozambique and Ethiopia but we have not seen this money. The result is that the presence of peacekeepers on the ground is very thin,” he said on Sunday, as rebels renewed bloody attacks on Burundi’s capital Bujumbura.

A major issue on Bush’s tour that failed to produce a clear picture was Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe’s opponents accuse him of electoral fraud, violence and mismanagement that has caused chronic food shortages and 70 per cent unemployment.

Mugabe says the economic problems are due to sabotage by opponents and Western states angry over his seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

Before the trip, US Secretary of State Colin Powell had urged Zimbabwe’s neighbours to increase pressure on Mugabe to respect the rule of law and talk to his opponents.

But in Pretoria, Bush said he would not interfere in South African President Thabo Mbeki’s “quiet diplomacy” on Zimbabwe.

Bush welcomed Mbeki’s statement that Mugabe was talking to Zimbabwe’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), but the MDC said there were no such talks.

Zimbabwe was considered too divisive for the continent’s most powerful men to discuss at the African Union summit. Far from appearing as an agenda item, Mugabe took the chair for a while as the vice-president for southern Africa.

Bush’s trip took him to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria.—Reuters