Remarks at the COMESA Plenary

DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman, Your Majesty, Excellencies, colleagues and friends. It is a particular honor for me to be able to join you at this, the 10^th COMESA Summit. As President Bush begins his second term, the President and Secretary of State Rice suggested that I come to be able to consult with you, to hear what you are thinking, and to listen and learn. It’s a particular pleasure to be here because of my friendship with the outgoing Chair, President Museveni, as well as the incoming Chair of COMESA, President Kagame. Both have been very strong partners and friends of my country.

I also want to thank the people of Rwanda for their always warm hospitality. I first had the opportunity to visit Rwanda in 1989, a very different era. The people of Rwanda have suffered enormously, but they are rebuilding with courage and energy. And I wanted to come to show my respect for my Rwandan friends, with whom I had the good fortune to work as U.S. Trade Representative for four years, particularly the Minister of Trade of Rwanda, Minister Nshuti. I am also very proud of my association with COMESA and my friendship with the Secretary General Mwencha.

The United States recognizes the importance of regional associations in Africa to build cooperation, to support development, to strengthen security, and to advance good governance and democracy. We recognize that this is a step-by-step process. As Jomo Kenyatta said "Chembe na chembe gata hue" — "Little by little, we make progress" — and COMESA is progressing with trade facilitation, investment, the Court of Justice, the PTA Bank, the African Trade Union Insurance Agency, the Leather on Leather Projects Institute. The Secretary General has reported that trade growth within the COMESA Free Trade Area has now reached 20 percent a year, and that it has increased from some $1 billion in the year 2000 to over $5 billion last year.

I was delighted to be able to sign the U.S. Trade and Investment Framework Agreement with COMESA in 2001 and to chair our TIFA Council meetings with COMESA in 2002 and 2003. And I am pleased, even though I have moved to a new position, that my colleague Florizelle Liser will chair the next one, I believe, later this month.

As I have discussed with the Secretary General and his team, we are pleased that the United States could support COMESA with a $7 million Strategic Objective Agreement through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and also an extra $0.5 million from our Economic Support Funds. When I was Special Trade Representative, we worked closely with COMESA and with many of those in this room on AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act). We worked closely on the additions to AGOA, AGOA II, and last year, the AGOA Acceleration Act, which provided special help for African textiles and apparel.

Under AGOA, 98% of Sub-Saharan Africa's products now come into the United States duty free, and we have seen real results. In 2004, AGOA exports to the United States were up 88%, to $26.6 billion. COMESA exports under AGOA were up 227% to $2.3 billion, and the non-oil exports of that amount were up 48% to $1 billion. But as many of you mentioned this morning, we need to do more to diversify COMESA's exports. AGOA eliminates tariffs for some 6400 products. That means we can import fresh roses toys and games from Kenya, cereal and beverages from Ethiopia, fruits and nuts from Malawi, footwear from Mauritius, and pyrethrum, the beautiful flower that grows here in Rwanda.

In July at the AGOA Forum that will be held in Senegal, we hope to highlight with the hosts special efforts to cooperate for diversification, to achieve greater growth and competitiveness. For example, USAID has trade hubs in Nairobi and Gabarone that help connect our Department of Agriculture with COMESA and others to try to address the import requirements for particular agriculture products. Also, we need to connect our work with AGOA to that of the Doha Development Agenda and the WTO. And here I want to pay a special tribute to my friend, Minister Nshuti of Rwanda, who was an extremely close and effective partner last year as we got the Doha Development Agenda back on track. But we all know that this is something we must keep at.

The United States knows that we also need to work with you to integrate trade with aid. U.S. overseas development assistance has nearly doubled from 2000 to 2004, to $19 billion. That growth rate is higher than any time since the Marshall Plan for Europe fifty years ago. U.S. development aid to Sub-Saharan Africa has risen three to four times over that period, to about $3 to $5 billion over the past two years. Now the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) seeks to encourage home grown reforms for good governance, anti-corruption, sound economic policies and investing in people. Eight of the seventeen fully eligible MCA countries are from Sub-Saharan Africa and three of those are from COMESA. Seven of the thirteen eligible threshold countries are from Sub-Saharan Africa, and five of those are from COMESA.

Now, as I know from my conversations and work with many of you, the great challenge is how to draw all these strands of development together. If you combine development assistance, private capital flows, grants by NGOs, and trade, the United States now supplies 70 percent of the G-7 support to developing nations. And I was struck in particular that if you take the amount of net private investment, personal remittances to developing countries, and NGO grants, that amount from the United States totaled $48 billion last year, over two and half times the amount we had in overseas development assistance. So it emphasizes the importance of how we connect development aid with other capital flows.

Yet, trade and aid and capital flows also need to be combined with attention to AIDS crises and health. The initiative that we have for HIV/AIDS — the largest international health project in history — targets $15 billion over five years. Last year, we allocated $2.3 billion to that, but we know we have other serious health dangers too. For example, malaria, where we are devoting around $230 million a year and where more can be done. To be successful, we recognize we need to listen and learn as we work. We have to adjust, and we have to improve. We will need your guidance, that of COMESA, on trade, trade capacity building, AIDS, health, debt forgiveness, investment and education. Our goal is not just to help Sub-Saharan Africa, but to strengthen Sub-Saharan Africa in a global economy. Last week, I attended a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan, which talked about the economic opportunities in the broader Middle East. About a week before, I was in the countries of Southeast Asia, a very dynamic region, and before too long I will be traveling to China. If you look at each of those regions, they are moving ahead. So we need to work with COMESA to help your countries and the others of Sub-Saharan Africa to look beyond Europe and the United States, to look worldwide, because there are opportunities, but there is also competition.

I wanted to be here today with you also to discuss another challenge for Africa's future. Some of the speakers this morning mentioned: the challenges of violent strife, war, terrible crimes against populations, even genocide. I had the opportunity today to visit Rwanda's Genocide Memorial, and that tragedy should be burned in our memory. But Rwanda also shows a tremendous sign of the possibilities of epiphany.

Tomorrow, I return to Darfur and Khartoum, because Sudan has been another place of tragedy and sadness. There is a massive need for humanitarian aid, but also for security in creating the basis for peaceful reconciliation. As Chairman Konare of the African Union said recently at a meeting in Addis Ababa, if Sudan struggles and collapses in strife, it could take its nine neighbors and much of Africa with it.

So I wanted to come here to thank many of you for your very valuable contributions to the African Union's mission in Sudan and to express great appreciation for the contributions to expand the AU mission. I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to meet in Sudan with the fine soldiers of Nigeria, Rwanda, and Kenya, as well as those from South Africa, Ghana, Senegal. To back the leadership of the African Union, Secretary Rice and I have encouraged NATO support and I know our colleagues in the European Union have also joined in. The United States has offered to airlift the additional Rwandan forces and to help with training for command and control, technical support, logistics, as well as the financial support for these forces. We certainly recognize that a larger mission of the African Union, covering a vast area, needs special support for communications, transportation, supplies and planning.

I'll be visiting Sudan twice in six weeks, because, as I told President Bashir and Minister Ismail this morning, we want to do all we can to try to advance prospects for peaceful reconciliation and to create a new opportunity for all of Sudan's people. I want to see conditions with my own eyes because we need to work simultaneously on two interconnected challenges. They can either reinforce one another, creating a positive upward spiral, or they will pull one another down. First, the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), negotiated by Dr. Garang and First Vice President Taha under the guidance of President Bashir, offers a positive path. It can end twenty-one years of war. It can create an opportunity for rebuilding. And it can also produce a political framework for reconciliation between North and South and indeed all regions of Sudan. The Oslo Donors Conference in April generated pledges of $4.5 billion, and that shows the world will back a positive path. The United States has already committed $1 billion over two years and we're seeking a total contribution of $1.7 billion. Second, while we back the Comprehensive Peace Accord, we also have to meet the humanitarian and basic security needs in Darfur.

The UN Secretary General has just reminded us that the world's eyes are focused on Darfur. We must look to the next steps: a process of peace for Darfur led by the AU in Abuja, hosted and backed by the United States, UN Representative Pronk, and others. We must end this conflict now. We must end it now. The CPA and success in Darfur can reinforce one another. It opens fresh possibilities for a new government in Sudan under the CPA to integrate Sudan positively into the international economy, and on issues of politics as well as society. And as I mentioned to President Bashir this morning, I hope to have another opportunity to return to Sudan this July with the creation of a new interim government under the CPA. And I hope in doing so, we can rely on the leadership, the counsel and the practical support of those here, because the stakes are very high.

I know we will need to cooperate on other conflicts too. The Great Lakes process remains fragile, and stability is fundamental. So we're committed to support your efforts, particularly that of the tri-partite mechanism of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Many of you in this room have had the opportunity to meet with President Bush over the past four years. You know of his interest in you and you know of his respect for your accomplishments. We know the challenges of COMESA and of Sub-Saharan Africa are multi-layered and are very hard. So the President and Secretary Rice asked me to come to Rwanda to let you know that the United States will stand with you as a partner and as a friend, because we want Africa to be a vital part of the global economy and we want the African people to have security, opportunity and hope.

Thank you.

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