In Africa, Albright Vows ‘New Chapter’ in Ties

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright acknowledged that the United States for more than three decades viewed Africa as little more than a disaster-prone Cold War battlefield but pledged Tuesday to open a “new chapter” in relations with countries on the continent that promise to build democracy and free-market economies.

Opening a week’s tour of trouble spots that the Clinton administration has identified as candidates for its new partnership, Albright told a meeting sponsored by the Organization of African Unity that “Africa matters” to Washington and the world.

But she noted that, unlike previous high-level U.S. visitors, she brought no predetermined program and could not promise the sacks of aid money that once were the core of U.S. approaches to the Third World.

“It is time for the people of the United States to open a new chapter in our relations with the people of this continent,” Albright said.

“Africa’s best new leaders,” she added, “have brought a new spirit of hope and accomplishment to their countries. . . . They are challenging the United States and the international community to get over the paternalism of the past, to stop thinking of its Africa policy as a none-too-successful rescue service and to begin seizing the opportunities to work with Africans to transform their continent.”

In her speech, Albright did not name those new African leaders. But her itinerary makes clear her priorities: Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Angola, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

With the exception of South Africa, none of these nations is a fully functioning democracy, especially in the American sense. But U.S. officials insist that all these regimes are trying to enact political reform, and the leaders of some, such as Congo, Ethiopia and Uganda, have replaced truly appalling predecessors.

Congo, previously known as Zaire, looms especially large. Conflict and instability in that country, the largest in the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, have frequently spilled over its borders to infect neighboring states.

“For decades, Central Africa has been the scene of multiple conflicts fueled by the tragic legacy of colonialism, by destabilizing Cold War rivalries and by a recent history of international neglect,” Albright noted. “Unlocking the Congo’s vast potential will be essential to any long-term strategy for peace and prosperity” in the region.

Although a senior State Department official said later that “the day of large government aid programs to Africa is over,” Albright said the administration hopes to provide $30 million to help reorganize the civil and military justice systems in the nations of Central Africa.

An aide said the money will not be budgeted until the fiscal year that begins in October. But he said international technical assistance to courts will not require great sums to make an impact in a region where the police are feared and courts are often corrupt.

Albright also said the United States will contribute $10 million to a new World Bank fund designed to speed Congo’s rehabilitation after years of the corrupt and tyrannical rule of Mobutu Sese Seko and the brief civil war that installed Laurent Kabila in his place.

She said the administration will ask Congress to eliminate restrictions that now prohibit government-to-government aid programs to Congo.

Albright’s speech to OAU ambassadors, officials and invited guests was interrupted by applause only once, when she chastised the international community for its timid response to the slaughter of as many as 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda by the since-overthrown radical Hutu regime. “We, the international community, should have been more active in the early stages of the atrocities in Rwanda in 1994, and called them what they were--genocide,” she said.

In 1994, as U.S. delegate to the United Nations, Albright opposed a Security Council resolution calling for international peacekeepers for Rwanda. Aides said Tuesday that she had found the U.N. debate “frustrating” because some Security Council members wanted to establish a force even though they knew that it would be impossible to find countries willing to contribute the needed troops and equipment.

The United States and most other countries avoided using the term genocide, because, under an international convention, all nations must act if they conclude that there has been an attempt to wipe out members of a racial, ethnic or religious group. A senior official said Albright’s use of the word Tuesday was “a signal that we are not hesitant to identify those crimes for what they are” in the future.

In the post-Cold War period, with the Soviet challenge removed from the continent, Africa has witnessed dwindling American foreign policy interest, save for U.S. crisis intervention, and, of course, Washington’s support for South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement.

Albright’s visit to sub-Saharan Africa is only the second by a U.S. secretary of State in the post-Cold War period. Warren Christopher, who logged more travel than any of his predecessors, toured the region in 1996, late in his term. His Cold War predecessors, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III, also visited these areas only rarely.

After her OAU speech, Albright visited a high school to talk to members of the Civic Education Club--now an established part of the travel routine for the professor turned diplomat.

In response to a student’s question, Albright said Africa’s tragedy was that it was oppressed by colonial overlords for a century and by rapacious and repressive local leaders in the three decades since. At the same time, though, she endorsed the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi as one that “meets these responsibilities” of democracy and free-market economics.

Still, when Albright met privately with Meles earlier in the day, she agreed to the Ethiopian leader’s policy of refusing to allow representatives of opposition newspapers to cover events at his office. Opposition leaders say Meles has imposed tough limits on the media and has restricted other freedoms. But the international community views his regime as an improvement after the brutal Communist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.