Cameron, Zuma split over Libya

Published Jul 19, 2011

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President Jacob Zuma and British Prime Minister David Cameron have disagreed sharply over how the Libyan crisis may be resolved.

Cameron, making his first visit as prime minister, met Zuma in Pretoria on Monday.

He travelled on to Nigeria last night for meetings on Tuesday, but has cancelled visits to Rwanda and South Sudan so he may return to Britain to manage the growing political crisis over the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Zuma and Cameron made it clear at a press conference after their meeting that they were no closer on the Libyan issue. Their main point of disagreement remained the fate of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.

Cameron said he and Zuma wanted “to see a future for Libya that doesn’t include Gaddafi”.

“The difference is that the president sees that as the outcome of a political process, whereas I believe that for a political process to work it has to be the starting point.”

Zuma said: “We feel as African countries, that the Libyan people must decide their destiny.”

That included the fate of Gaddafi. “The Libyan people must finally decide, ‘We don’t want this system, we don’t want this leader’.”

Cameron was asked if he did not think the Nato bombardment of Gaddafi’s forces had served its purpose and should be ended to allow AU-proposed talks to begin.

“It is open to Gaddafi at any time to deliver a ceasefire by stopping the attacks on his own people, by withdrawing from the cities and towns he attacked and by returning his troops to barracks,” Cameron said.

“He has occasionally announced a ceasefire, but all the time he has announced it, he is still shelling and killing, maiming and murdering his own citizens.”

Zuma said that he and Cameron also disagreed on the point that “there is a need that violence must give way to negotiations”.

He said it might take a long time, but if the AU, EU, Nato and the UN applied their minds, they could find a mechanism to implement a ceasefire that could be monitored by all.

He suggested, as an apparent compromise, that the future of Gaddafi could be discussed in talks that would deal with obstacles to the start of substantive negotiations.

It was evident the two leaders had also disagreed about the EU’s targeted sanctions on some Zimbabwean leaders. Cameron said the EU would revisit these sanctions only when the road map to elections, which was being negotiated by the three Zimbabwean parties, delivered “real political change”.

Defending his decision to visit Africa at the height of the phone-hacking crisis, Cameron said: “I believe it is right for the British prime minister to be out there with British business trying to drum up exports and growth that will be good for both countries.”

Britain was concerned with both Africas, he said – a “starving Africa” and a “booming Africa”, Cameron said.

The deepening famine in the Horn of Africa was “the most catastrophic situation in a generation”. Tens of thousands of people might have died, Cameron said. He urged other countries to follow the example of Britain, which had mobilised an extra £52 million (R584m) in aid.

But other parts of Africa were booming and Cameron said he had come to South Africa first “because this is the gateway to that new economic future”.

“Britain is South Africa’s biggest long-term foreign investor,” said Cameron.

“Our trade is worth £9 billion (R100bn) a year and exports from South Africa to the UK during the first third of this year were up 50 percent on the same period last year.”

Cameron said he and Zuma had reiterated their commitment to doubling bilateral trade by 2015. They had also discussed Britain’s efforts to support the new initiative to create an African free trade area, joining the 26 countries of the Southern African Development Community, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and East African Community.

The free trade area could increase Africa’s GDP by $62bn (R433bn) a year, $20bn more than sub-Saharan Africa received in aid. - Foreign Editor

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