Powers At Play In AfricaMarch 4th, 2011 Africa seems to be where the battle lines are being drawn. Ivory Coast is beginning to look like a civil war, Libya is in a civil war. Zimbabwe is accused of sending arms to the former president in Ivory Coast. The French are the imperialist power with the greatest interest in Ivory Coast, Great Britain in Zimbabwe and Italy in Libya. They still exert an influence even half a century or more after these countries gained independence. It is called neo-colonialism. It is a form of indirect colonialism through economic measures, trade agreements and the not so subtle application of military force, more on the part of the French in their former colonies than the British or the Italians.
Zimbabwe and Libya are two states that have broken with their former colonial masters, Zimbabwe has struck out on its own path, become a pariah state in the eyes of the west and the former colonial power Great Britain, due to its land redistribution policies that disinherited many wealthy white farmers, but not so much in the eyes of fellow Africans. Libya with its oil wealth had become under Gaddafi something of a gadfly in the west, supporting the IRA and the PLO, in the 70's and 80's, but more recently has become more of an ally to the western powers and close to its former colonial ruler, Italy for whom it supplies 25% of its oil and has major investments.
Chavez is now making a move to try to bring an end to the conflict in Libya in a manner that will save face for his buddy Gaddafi, and also try to salvage the anti-imperialist front that he has been developing with the aid of Cuba and several other Latin American countries.
The USA and its imperialist cronies in Western Europe are demanding that Gaddafi leave. This is a not to subtle attempt to impose a neo-liberal regime upon Libya where the opposition does not seem to have much political sophistication. There is a lot of oil there up for grabs. This could be a means to break OPEC and the Chavez related group of socialist and would be socialist states.
Meanwhile China, a power with much influence in Africa, says little. They are playing their cards close to the vest. Russia meantime is using the windfall profits in supplying much of the natural gas and oil to Europe to rebuild its own military.
Things are muddy to say the least. I am sure the secret police and CIA are having a field day mucking things up. We can only support the progressive moves of the people and hope they come out victorious.
========================================================
From Reuters
Italy not mulling Libyan stake freeze for now: source
By Giselda Vagnoni and Deepa Babington
ROME | Fri Mar 4, 2011 11:55am EST
ROME (Reuters) - Italy is not considering freezing Libyan stakes in Italian companies at present since the Libyan entities holding the stakes are not included on an EU assets freeze list, a source familiar with the matter said on Friday.
Libya owns stakes in blue-chip Italian companies including bank UniCredit and defense company Finmeccanica, and the fate of its holdings have been under scrutiny since the European Union imposed sanctions on Libya.
Italy, Libya's closest Western ally until a few weeks ago, does not envisage any unilateral initiatives to freeze Libyan assets and will only implement measures adopted by the European Union, the source told Reuters.
The EU earlier this week agreed to freeze the assets of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and a list of senior Libyan officials after Libyan security forces used violence to crack down on protesters.
But since that list does not mention the country's sovereign wealth fund, the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), or the Libyan central bank — entities that hold stakes in Italian companies — Italy does not plan to freeze the holdings, the source said.
"The rule does not say their stakes have to be frozen," the source said.
The LIA and Libya's central bank together own about 7.5 percent of Italian bank UniCredit. The LIA also holds a 2 percent stake in Finmeccanica. Libya also owns stakes in soccer club Juventus, automaker Fiat and has expressed interest in buying a stake in oil company ENI.
Asked about a potential freeze of Libyan stakes, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said a cabinet meeting on Thursday did not discuss the topic. He had earlier said Italy would adopt measures in accordance with the European Union.
Other European countries have been more aggressive in their pursuit of assets linked to Gaddafi and his top aides.
British publisher Pearson Plc this week said the LIA's 3.2 percent stake in the company had been frozen due to the sanctions, while Austria has widened an asset freeze list to include a top official at the LIA.
Italy has found itself in an awkward position over its close ties to Libya ever since Gaddafi drew global condemnation for a violent crackdown on protests against his four-decade rule.
Mindful that Libya supplies a quarter of Italy's crude oil needs, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had actively encouraged warmer ties between the two nations and signed a friendship treaty that included a $5 billion reparations deal.
Frattini has stressed that the friendship treaty has been suspended but not revoked.
Libyan officials have aggressively scouted opportunities for investing in Italy in the last couple of years, and Italian companies have benefitted from contracts for energy and infrastructure projects in Libya.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/04/us-italy-libya-stakes-idUSTRE7234FQ20110304
================================================
From Bloomberg
Chavez Summons Regional Allies to Back Libya Mediation Bid
March 04, 2011, 1:54 PM EST
(Updates with Venezuelan Foreign Minister comment in sixth, seventh paragraphs.)
March 4 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez summoned an emergency meeting of his closest Latin American allies in a bid to mediate in the Libyan crisis that has divided the country and sent oil prices surging.
Chavez, who has compared Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to Latin American liberation hero Simon Bolivar, said yesterday that Qaddafi has agreed to mediation to resolve the conflict. Representatives from his regional bloc known as Alba, including foreign ministers from Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba, are attending the meeting. The Arab League is studying Chavez's proposal, Secretary-General Amr Moussa said yesterday.
"On the agenda is the constitution of an international humanitarian committee for the peace and union of the Libyan people, which has been well received by Colonel Qaddafi's government," Venezuela Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said in comments carried by state television. "There's an open debate between the vision of the south, the vision of peace, and the warlike vision from NATO and the US that aims to impose itself on the world yet again, on the Arab peoples and, particularly, on the Libyan people."
Conflicting Signals
Chavez's plan would face stiff opposition from Libyan opposition groups and the U.S. and France, who have called on Qaddafi to step down from power after hundreds of people have died from battles between the military and anti-government protesters since Feb. 17.
Venezuela, the largest oil producer in South America, has strengthened ties with the OPEC nation since Chavez took power in 1999.
Maduro said Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa authorized Venezuela to select members of the commission, according to a letter dated yesterday that he read on state TV.
"We authorize you to take all necessary steps to select the members and coordinate their participation in the dialogue," Maduro read from the letter.
Comments earlier this week by Qaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam suggest Libya's willingness to accept mediation is unclear.
"It's like me going to broker a deal in the Amazon," Saif Qaddafi told Sky News. "They're our friends, we respect them, but they're far away and have no idea about Libya."
Oil Rise
In New York trading, crude rose to a 29-month high on Libyan unrest, and is heading for a third straight weekly advance.
Crude oil for April delivery increased $1.94, or 1.9 percent, to $103.85 a barrel at 1:49 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices climbed as much as $2.18 to $104.09, the highest level since Sept. 29, 2008.
Chavez said yesterday that Qaddafi won't leave power to seek asylum in Venezuela or Nicaragua and will die fighting if necessary while warning that a foreign invasion could push crude to $200 a barrel.
"If the civil war in Libya were to become an international war, oil could surpass $200 and that doesn't benefit anyone in the world, that's why Venezuela has made its proposal from the Alba," he said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said that if Qaddafi doesn't respond "to the many calls across the international community for him to step down, it's uncertain to me what an international commission is going to accomplish."
Peru said it will support Chavez's plan, even after breaking diplomatic ties with Libya on Feb. 23.
Chavez as a peace broker is unlikely to prove effective because of his alliance with Qaddafi and the dim prospects that Libyan rebel groups would negotiate with the strongman, Win Thin, head of emerging market strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York said in a research note.
"Chavez is hardly an impartial third party in this conflict, as he has cozied up to Qaddafi over the years," Thin said. "We would not expect opposition forces to be very open to any sort of Chavez intervention."
–With assistance from Nathan Gill in Quito News. Editors: Bill Faries, Robert Jameson
To contact the reporters on this story: Daniel Cancel in Caracas at dcancel@bloomberg.net; Jose Orozco in Caracas at jorozco8@bloomberg.net
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-04/chavez-summons-regional-allies-to-back-libya-mediation-bid.html
========================================================
From Reuters
Exclusive: U.N. probes Zimbabwe arms sent to Ivory Coast
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS | Thu Mar 3, 2011 6:01pm EST
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations is investigating suspected arms transfers from Zimbabwe to Ivory Coast's incumbent leader Laurent Gbagbo in violation of U.N. sanctions, according to a report obtained by Reuters.
The report emerged after a week of gun battles between forces loyal to Gbagbo and his rival Alassane Ouattara, almost universally recognized as winner of a November 28 poll, that risk pushing the top cocoa grower back to full-blown civil war.
Diplomats on the U.N. Security Council said the possible transfer of weapons to Gbagbo was a serious matter. They said his forces could use them against U.N. peacekeepers — UNOCI, who recognize Ouattara as Ivory Coast's president — or Ivorian civilians who support Ouattara.
UNOCI's confidential "Embargo monitoring report January 2011," obtained by Reuters on Thursday, said the mission was gathering more information on "the arrival of light weapons cargoes from Zimbabwe." U.N. officials told Reuters arms from Zimbabwe would have been intended for Gbagbo and not Ouattara.
In January, Gbagbo sent a special envoy to Harare to meet with and enlist the support of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who like Gbagbo has been accused by his opponents of election fraud and is under U.S. and European Union sanctions.
Ivory Coast has been under an arms embargo since the last bout of serious violence in 2004, when pro-Gbagbo forces bombed French peacekeepers in the rebel-held north. Analysts say both sides have repeatedly violated the embargo.
The report also said UNOCI was monitoring a shipment of 10 large wooden boxes that "may contain trucks or tanks."
"This cargo has been at Abidjan airport for six months," the UNOCI report said. "Aerial pictures confirmed the presence of these boxes, which are under 24/7 hours military surveillance."
AIRCRAFT
Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch said countries aiding Gbagbo should be careful: "Given the documented pattern of unlawful attacks on civilians by pro-Gbagbo forces, countries violating the arms embargo to provide weapons to his forces might be complicit in grave human rights abuses."
The report spoke of a "suspected cargo delivery from Angola," involving two Soviet-manufactured Sukhoi-27 fighter jets and a Soviet-made MIG-25 interceptor and reconnaissance bomber, spotted at San Pedro airport in Cape Verde, and a Russian cargo plane seen at Abidjan in January.
The Russian aircraft "has a considerable cargo capacity to carry heavy military equipment or a company of soldiers," the report said.
The report did not explicitly say whether the fighter jets were linked to Gbagbo's government. But it said UNOCI had received information that the "same (Russian cargo) aircraft had supplied equipment to the Ivorian government in 2005."
An official at Zimbabwe's mission expressed surprise about the allegation and declined to comment. Diplomats at Angola's U.N. mission were not immediately available for a reaction.
Gbagbo has ordered UNOCI out of the country, a demand the mission has ignored. U.N. troops have been protecting Ouattara, who is holed up in an Abidjan hotel along with his advisers.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/03/us-ivorycoast-un-arms-idUSTRE72279X20110303
==========================================
From RT News
Russia's military spending soars
Published: 25 February, 2011, 12:49
Russia has revealed details of its ambitious plan to upgrade its army over the next ten years, planning to spend US$650 billion on the project.
The unveiled large-scale plans of the Russian defense ministry propose the spending of vast sums of money up to 2020.
First and foremost, Russian defense will focus on the development of strategic nuclear weapons, construction of over 100 military vessels for Russian Navy, including construction of four originally French-made Mistral-class amphibious assault ships, and the introduction into the Air Force of over 1,000 helicopters and 600 military planes, including fifth generation PAK-FA fighter.
Most of the military hardware will be equipped with next-generation weaponry.
For the first time ever, Russia is planning to buy military equipment from NATO-member countries – two Mistral helicopter carriers will be bought in France (with two more licensed to be built in Russia), as well as samples of armored vehicles from Italy and elements of personal combat systems also from France.
Moscow's plans to modernize Russian strategic nuclear forces do not contravene the newly-signed New START nuclear arms reduction treaty with the US, which aims at the reduction of up to a third of the strategic nuclear weapons in both Russia and the US.
President Dmitry Medvedev came out and said that he really wants the Russian military to be a source of innovation, and upgrading military forces is what all the spending is based upon.
http://rt.com/news/military-budget-russia-2020/
===========================================
From AIDWATCH
China in Africa myths and realities By Laura Freschi | Published February 9, 2010
In recent years, journalists and pundits in the West have looked on China's economic engagement with Africa, including foreign aid, with growing alarm. An NYT op-ed a few years ago called China a "rogue donor," giving aid that is "nondemocratic in origin and nontransparent in practice, and its effect is typically to stifle real progress while hurting ordinary citizens."
Other negative stories about China in Africa include China abetting genocide in Darfur by supplying arms in exchange for Sudanese oil; propping up corrupt government in Zimbabwe; swooping in to undo the anti-corruption work of the IMF or the World Bank in Angola or Nigeria with offers of no-strings-attached loans; and generally ignoring environmental, safety and labor standards on projects in Africa.
So the idea that China's aid to Africa could be in any possible way better, more credible, or more effective than Western aid to Africa may be a hard sell. But Deborah Brautigam, author of the new book The Dragon's Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, argues that focusing only on the China threat makes us blind to the real opportunities Chinese engagement offers for African development.
Part of the problem, says Brautigam, is that there is very little information about what China is really doing in Africa, and in this vacuum, "myths sprang up and were rapidly accepted as facts." Brautigam fills this void and dispels, or at least complicates, some commonly held beliefs about China in Africa.
In other areas she finds evidence to back up criticism of China's Africa policies, but argues that we should not see China's stance towards Africa as static; it is evolving and can sometimes be influenced by international pressure. Throughout, some of Brautigam's best insights come from asking "compared to what?": The book seeks to compare Chinese aid to Western aid as it really is, not as we wish it were.
A few examples of China myths and partial truths:
1) China targets aid to African states with abundant natural resources and bad governments
Actually, China gives money to almost every single country in Sub-Saharan Africa, excluding only those that don't acknowledge the One China policy. There is little evidence that China gives more aid to countries with more natural resources or specifically targets countries with worse governance. China is not alone in its interest in natural resources in Africa, and natural resources are not the primary motivating factor for Chinese aid: like all donors, US definitely included, China is motivated to give aid by a mix of political, commercial, and social/ideological factors.
2) The Chinese don't hire Africans to work on their projects
This depends on how long a company has been working in Africa, and how easy it is to find appropriate local labor. Ultimately, it also depends on African governments themselves, who have the power to dictate what proportion of project staff must be local (as Angola and the DRC have done). Brautigam also points to the stark contrast in standard of living between Chinese workers and managers in Africa, who tend to live in extremely simple conditions, and Western advisors, who more typically live in expensive housing or hotels. While Western experts may be fewer, they cost their projects a lot more.
3) China outbids other companies by flouting social and environmental standards
This one's true but evolving…Brautigam portrays China as "on a steep learning curve," struggling with environmental and corporate social responsibility issues at home and abroad. She gives some evidence that China and Chinese companies are becoming increasingly sensitive to international perception on these issues and may be inching towards international standards.
http://aidwatchers.com/2010/02/china-in-africa-myths-and-realities/
No comments:
Post a Comment