Business Daily (Nairobi)
Allan Odhiambo
21 January 2008
Threats of fallouts have gripped Africa's largest market bloc as a section of its membership began implementing interim trade deals recently signed with Europe.
Though the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) has been keen on pursuing joint trade deals with the EU under the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), only nine of the 16-member-bloc have adopted the deal. But more worrying is that they did so under separate platforms.
Notable in the group is the East Africa Community (EAC) that chose to independently sign deals with the EU in December, last year, to beat a World Trade Organisation (WTO) deadline.
The Comesa secretariat is now raising the red flag as major rifts emerge within its membership over the new interim deals.
The divisions took centre stage during discussions of the Comesa special Regional Negotiating Forum(RNF) in Lusaka last week, with officials urging urgent talks by regional ministers to stem the crisis.
"In view of the need to preserve regional solidarity and unity, it is necessary that we discuss the way forward and strategies to achieve our negotiating mandate and objectives on Economic Partnership Agreements," Comesa secretary-general Erastus Mwencha said.
A final report seen by Business Daily carried a grim overview, saying the interim arrangements had potential negative implications for the regional integration agenda.
"It was agreed that ESA should consider ways of preserving its regional integration objectives by ensuring co-ordination and harmonisation of negotiations with Southern African Development Community (SADC) and East African Community (EAC) groupings," the report said.
The Comesa secretariat will now take urgent analysis of the different interim agreements reached by members in the sub region with a view to co-ordinate regional integration programmes by April , 2008.
Sources close to the closed-door talks told Business Daily that the fallouts were seriously eminent within EAC bloc where Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi were sympathetic to the ESA configuration while Uganda and Tanzania remained pessimistic.
"This situation poses a threat to the future of Comesa because members are divided on whether to remain there or forge a way forward as an EAC Customs Union," one source said. The Comesa Customs Union is coming up by year end and under World Trade Organisation rules, a country cannot belong to two customs unions.
Officials of the EAC are now expected to meet in Arusha, Tanzania next month to make a ruling on the matter, indicating how the bloc was likely to relate with other Comesa members in future.
The position reached will guide on deliberations with Comesa Ministerial task force.
The President of the African Union Commission Alpha Oumar Konare, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki have publicly criticised selective signing of the deals saying they posed a threat to Africa unity.
The leaders claimed that the signing of trade deals with the EU in clusters could provide for "divide and rule tactics," reducing the continent's bargaining power in future trade negotiations.
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