PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF BURKINA FASO

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF BURKINA FASO

Although Africa was now torn by more conflicts than at any time before, the continent had never been so free in terms of controlling its own destiny and stability, President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso said at a Headquarters press conference this afternoon.

He said that Africa's relative stability of 30 years ago had been brought about by the international struggle between the Eastern and Western ideological blocs. But now, for the first time, Africans held responsibility for their continent's stability.

President Campaoré, who is the current Chairman of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), told a correspondent who had asked whether he was optimistic about the continent's future that the OAU was the result of a colonial past, and that Africans had realized that stability was the guarantee of their self-reliance. They were working with conviction and energy to restore stability within historical limits and in conditions of poverty that had sometimes fed the fires of African conflict.

What was the solution to those conflicts? he was further asked. President Compaoré said Africans were working to make the conflict-prevention machinery more effective and the means of managing conflict more efficient. The preventive role would begin within individual States because it was the living conditions of citizens that led to domestic stability or instability. At the same time, that could have an impact on the OAU's principles of non-interference and conflict prevention.

Could an African solution be found to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and could the OAU accept interference by neighbouring countries? a correspondent asked. The President replied that the difficulty in solving that conflict lay in the inability of those taking initiatives to work on the basis of the continental body's founding principle of non- interference. If that principle were applied, the OAU would not be in its present position.

However, he added, it should not be forgotten that the complexity of the problem was a result of that country's history. It was necessary to go back 18 months, when the same forces that had defied the principle of non- interference in helping President Laurent-Desiré Kabila to power, were the same forces involving themselves in the present conflict.

Although the Southern African Development Community (SADC) was dealing with the matter, the OAU would certainly be shouldering increasing responsibilities and would become further involved in handling the crisis, he added.

Burkina Faso Press Conference - 2 - 22 September 1998

Asked about plans to divert Africa's massive military budgets to more civilian-oriented expenditure, he told another correspondent that most African countries today were trying, under criteria recommended by the international community, particularly the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to devote at least 20 per cent of their resources for social purposes such as health and education.

What role the United Nations could play in achieving the lifting of sanctions imposed on Burundi by countries of the Great Lakes region? he was asked. President Compaoré said the world body would only take a hand if there was a lack of progress by the OAU and by neighbouring countries mediating between the Government of President Pierre Buyoya and armed rebels.

Regarding sanctions against Libya, he said the OAU had succeeded in having law rather than force applied to that question. As a result, it was up to the Secretary-General, the International Court of Justice and the Security Council to decide how conditions could be prepared for the proper conduct of lifting of sanctions.

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