MBEKI'S BERLIN AIDS COUP

WORLD
LEADERS
BACK
MBEKI
ON POVERTY & AIDS

5th June 2000

By FINTAN DUNNE
Editor
AidsMyth Dissident News


Conference on Modern Governance in the 21st Century

It is Saturday 3rd June 2000, in Berlin. South African President, Thabo Mbeki is sharing a press conference platform with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and US President Bill Clinton. For Mbeki, this is to be an important milestone in his diplomatic offensive on the needs of Africa and his challenge to the current AIDS paradigm. He had just attended a summit aimed at defining a "Third Way" for 'left-leaning' governments in the new globalised economy. Mbeki was the only African leader invited to attend.

The communiqué issued at the press conference by fourteen world leaders, at the conclusion of this two-day conference organized by Gerhard Schroeder, backed Thabo Mbeki's campaign to stress the role of poverty in the spread of AIDS, and pledged to raise the issue at G8 and World Bank meetings later this year. The heads of state adopted Mbeki's position that the AIDS debate had failed to take into consideration Africa-specific issues in the disease's spread.

Participating leaders included Argentina's Fernando de la Rua, Brazil's Fernando Cardoso, Canada's Jean Chretien, Chile's Ricardo Lagos, France's Lionel Jospin, Greece's Costas Simitis, Italy's Giuliano Amato, New Zealand's Helen Clark, Sweden's Goran Persson and Portugal's Antonio Guterres. The summit got scant coverage - overshadowed, in part, by Clinton's meeting with Russia's Putin.

TB, MALARIA PLAY A PART

The leaders vowed to specifically take into consideration Mbeki's belief that in Africa poverty and the lack of action on tuberculosis and malaria - the continent's biggest killer - are at the center of the spread of AIDS. Bill Clinton said: "We agreed that those of us who are members of the G8 will emphasize these issues, particularly the impact of TB and malaria in relation to AIDS."

The final communiqué, stated: "We support an increased focus on resources in health infrastructure. We also commit to increasing our contributions to vaccine and immunization efforts that assist the poorest countries and fostering the development of new vaccines and immunizations to prevent diseases such as TB, malaria and HIV/AIDS." He called for developed countries to lend material support to the need to spread educational opportunities in developing nations, close the digital divide and increase their responses to diseases.

Mbeki's coup in securing the support of leaders is a major diplomatic success and boost for his presidency. He has been on a diplomatic offensive to counteract the AIDS hysteria which almost swamped his call for an African solution to African disease. Although media frenzy continues, in the corridors of world power Mbeki has gone a long way towards winning the battle.

Key to his success is his developing role as an honest broker between the developed and developing world. He made it clear in private talks with leaders that he was not going to be railroaded into squandering his country's resources on AIDS medications while Africa was in the grip of much more debilitating diseases. The quid pro quo for his global intermediary role was agreement by the other leaders with his approach to the AIDS issue. His inclusion in the Berlin meeting and his high profile on the post-meeting platform are evidence that the AIDS dissident cause has an advocate who now wields pivotal power on the international stage.

THE "THIRD WAY" CONFERENCE

The "third way" consensus of the meeting involves the redefinition of the role of government, the curbing of rampant globalization and the call for social responsibility. Mbeki said that one of the greatest challenges this century was to bring equality and social justice to those being hit by the negative impact of globalization. He spoke of shared values and the need to put those values into practice. "There's a value system which is common among us. There are certain things that we're pursuing that need to be achieved. There's a globalization process taking place and therefore the international system of cooperation is one of the things that must be addressed during this process of networking," he said.

After his trip to the United States last week, President Thabo Mbeki had already announced his intention to lobby for a new "development" WTO round when he attends a G8 meeting of industrialized countries in July. The South African government is lobbying industrialized countries for a better deal for the South at the WTO. An emerging G5 of the south (South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Brazil and India) now meets regularly and is assuming a leading role on behalf of the developing world.

Following Mbeki's recent UK and US trip, Director-General in the presidency, Frank Chikane, said a major achievement of Mbeki's visit abroad had been that there was agreement in principle that there was an anomaly in the world economy regarding Africa's position, which had to be corrected, and that Mbeki wanted a restructuring of the international global system. Mbeki discussed his plan, similar to the Marshall plan used to reconstruct post-war Europe, with Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mbeki's influence on the meeting was publicly acknowledged by three of the leaders at the end of the conference. Jospin said Mbeki had reminded the meeting that globalization may leave others - particularly the poor in developing countries, behind. Guterres said "Mbeki had been very clear" that the world had to work towards "engineering" new solutions and mechanisms for its problems.

On Friday, Mbeki told CNN television news that there were no differences between him and Clinton on AIDS. He said the Center for Disease Control, the US government's disease thinktank, had agreed to host a conference of "so-called" dissident and orthodox scientists to sort out their differences on the science of AIDS. Playing the AIDS issue softly-softly in public - while standing firm in private, looks like being a winning strategy for the world's leading covert AIDS dissident.

Fintan Dunne
Editor
Aidsmyth Dissident News.

FURTHER PRESS COVERAGE OF MEETING

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000602_3383.html

http://www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/06/03/germany.summit.reut/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_775000/775551.stm


AidsMyth Dissident News
http://www.aidsmyth.com
mail@aidsmyth.com
Copyright © 2000 Fintan Dunne
Reproduce only non-commercially and entirely.

SEND this page to a friend. The url of this item is:
http://www.aidsmyth.com/news/000605mbekiberlin.htm
Copy/paste the above url into an email and send it to a friend