Paul Fauvet
20 April 2008
Port Louis — The SADC (Southern African Development Community) Consultative Conference on Development and Poverty will go into an unscheduled third day after failing to reach agreement on Saturday on the content of a final communiqué.
Speaking to reporters on Saturday night, the SADC Executive Secretary, Tomas Salomao, said that some of the foreign donors represented at the conference felt unable to agree to the text of the final statement without making "further consultations among themselves, in particular on a technical matter relating to how specific we are about the interventions made at the opening session (on Friday)".
"Some of us in the region say you don't need to go into the details, but others say we should have the details", he added.
The group of international cooperating partners (the current euphemism for donors) "say they don't have the mandate to agree", continued Salomao, "so they have requested the SADC Council of Ministers to adjourn the meeting to 08.00 on Sunday morning for the adoption of the communiqué".
Salomao said a consensus text of the communiqué was now ready, and he was optimistic that the donors, after consultation with their capitals, would indeed accept it. Time is short - for come what may, the meeting must end early on Sunday morning, and give way to a second event, namely the SADC heads of state summit on poverty.
Salomao gave no details of what the sticking points raised by the donors in relation to the Friday opening statements were - but he did not believe they concerned issues of governance. He thought there was "a clear understanding that governance must be part of our joint statement".
He admitted that "technical difficulties" can sometimes hide political disagreements, "but it has not been clearly stated that this is the case here. My understanding is that there is a joint effort to reach a compromise solution".
He downplayed the long wait for a final communiqué that never appeared, saying that such events also happened at the United Nations and other international forums. "That's the practice", he said. "Nothing strange is happening here. We keep going until we have a consensual communiqué".
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