The moves are noticeable and two upon the advent of the New Year 2000. One, President Clinton personally attends to matters as regards Syria-Israel peace talks held in the US. Two, seizing on time as rotating chairman of UN Security Council it has made a timely effort to impose a "Month of Africa" on the UN.

Meanwhile, being a precedent unknown to US diplomacy, this country loses no time in sending its Vice President Al Gore on a mission January to chair the New Year's first meeting at the General Headquarters of the UN.

It should have been a thing impeachable for the UN to have a "Month of Africa" or various meetings tilting to problems in regard to Africa. UN Secretary-general Kofi Annan once points out rightly at a UN Security Council meeting: We have to cope with challenges brought about by the times and this is especially so for Africa. Of the 48 poorest countries of the world, says Kofi Annan, 33 are in Africa. Of the 20-odd regions torn by armed conflicts, over 50 percent are also in Africa. Food supplies are still particularly short in 15 African countries. Of the world's 11 million orphans from ravages of aids, 90 percent more are also in Africa. There is no need to say problems with regard to Africa have long been chief subject matters weighed at many UN meetings. Meetings called, problems raised and decisions made in regard to Africa have taken up as much high as over 60 percent of UN workload, this is no exaggeration. In view of the seriousness of problems found in Africa, a special report has once been submitted by Kofi Annan to a UN Council meeting, not to say other meetings and discussions by African foreign ministers held at the UN headquarters in the last two years. But not one of these in furtherance of Africa's interest had ever been found on the agenda of routine work of successive US administrations in the past. Why now something unknown and unexpected and surprising moves as that "Month of Africa" to be named by the US today?

We should say Clinton administration has once brandished its olive branches to Africa in the last two years. By the spring of 1998, Clinton had turned up as the first US president on a visit to that region. During this visit he had presented his host counterparts with many a varied US-African partnership relationships, US support and increased US trade and investment for putting an end to armed conflicts and bringing about development in the African world. This is as evidenced by a certain US-Africa Ministerial Meeting held at Washington in March 1999. By October, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright followed to go on a six-nation tour and a visit by the country's ambassador to the UN Hrichard Holbrooke to Africa in December. In the same month, an Energy Meeting of Ministers from Africa was further called in the US. By now, there is a "Month of Africa" as has been named by the US at the UN General Headquarters, to be prompted as it has been by the desire for building up US ties with African countries.

A view generally held by people in the West is that in the remaining year of his presidency Clinton has already made up his mind to do something that might add some honor to his name once he is out of office. This includes such an effort in pioneering the way and developing diplomatic relations with the African countries in history. But dissatisfaction has long been found among the African countries for US foreign policy. A fact to be noted is that Africa has long been placed in a negligent position by US diplomacy. Things have been especially so after the Kosovo war. The US has not shown the slightest sympathy with the lives of several hundred thousand African refugees killed in Rwanda. By its all-out Kosovo war and its close ties with European powers it has revealed the sham humanitarianism of US supremacy and paramount consideration of its strategic interest. There is no room for Africa. What the US seeks after represents nothing but the calculating nature of US diplomacy. It deceives no one in Africa not to say US-branded "Month of Africa". A thing the US sets its eyes on is that the African countries are richly endowed with natural resources and great market potentials presented to avaricious US policy makers. Proceeding from long-range strategic interest and efforts for expansion and development the US naturally wants to try moves to play up to Africa. This is the logic of the US, without doubt.

Still, many media find it sorry that in this "Month of Africa" as stigmatized by the US at the UN General Headquarters no discussions have been conducted on finding effective solutions to wiping out Africa's poverty, elimination of local armed conflicts and other accursed things in the region. Instead, a concentrated effort has to be made by such an international peacekeeping body as the UN for discussions on building up people's health, prevention of aids and the like problems, a thing unknown to the history of the UN. Meanwhile, by pronouncements of Vice President Al Gore, what he is going to get on hand to help Africa might be in the type of some amounts of money from the US Congress. In the eyes of the African countries, the US is just a country playing on a slippery tongue short of practical things or benefits in demand. So doubts are raised about the actual intention of the US when it flaunts the name of the UN to name a "Month of Africa". As a matter of course, some media have linked Gore's excursion to the UN with his presidential campaign now on in the US. New York Times says bluntly that by his excursion to a "UN aids meeting" as in this month Al Gore has his eyes only on the votes of black people and 9 percent of votes from homosexuals in the US. (Fu Fuyuan and Zhou Dewu)