Mbeki Vows to Promote African Economic Recovery ProgramSouth African President Thabo Mbeki Wednesday vowed to promote the Millennium Africa Recovery Plan (MAP)."We can turn the corner," Mbeki said at a luncheon at the National Press Club here. "The peoples of the African continent have the capacity to do this and must do it." African themselves must take responsibility and make sure that there would be peace and economic development in Africa, he said. "We cannot continue to sustain an image of the African continent, an image of conflict, wars, refugees, military governments, dictatorship, absence of human rights, general regression, further entrenchment of poverty," he said. "We needed to change these things." The economic recovery plan, drafted jointly by Mbeki and the leaders of Algeria and Nigeria, is aimed at spurring economic growth and promoting stability in the region. "It's my belief that really what we need to do now is to pay a lot of attention to matters of implementation, the translation of policy into something actual, whether we're talking about integrated schools, whether we're talking about housing for people, water, roads, electricity and health," he said. Mbeki said he was "greatly encouraged" by the positive response from the U.S. and the European Union to MAP. He said that the Group of Eight industrialized nations, which are meeting in Genoa, Italy, next month, have got the matter of African recovery program on the agenda. Mbeki, who was in Washington in part to promote MAP, met with President George W. Bush at the White House Tuesday and asked the U.S. to support Africa's efforts to deal with violence, poverty and diseases like HIV/AIDS. Sub-Saharan Africa is a region with the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDS. In South Africa alone, over 4 million people, or one tenth of the total population, live with the disease. |
| People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ |