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afrol.com, 18 September - The president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, gave contradicting signals in respond to the feelers put out by the dictator of Equatorial Guinea, president Teodoro Obiang Nguema, to resume the economic aid by the European Union to his country. The summit of the two leaders was strongly criticized even before it took place. It therefore became a peculiar meeting. The Equatorial Guinean president presented a long list of promises and plans to fulfill the long awaited democratisation process. However, to obtain economic aid, this time only promises were not enough. The European Union wanted to see results, but it left the door wide open for a future cooperation. President Obiang travelled to Brussels on Thursday to have meetings with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, and the European Commissioner of Development and Humanitarian Aid, Poul Nielson. The controversy about his visit was increased by the contradictive information given to the public. As soon as the visit of Todoro Obiang was known, the socialist Euro MPs criticized Prodi's willingness to meet with the Equatorial Guinean dictator, In first place, it was actually the government of Equatorial Guinea which announced the visit of Obiang to Prodi. The European Commission, on the other hand, didn't even publish Prodi's summit with Obiang on his official agenda (which is a public document, available on Internet). According to the Commission, Obiang was only o meet with Nielson. But finally, Obiang achieved a meeting with both of them. Prodi kept a low profile while the European socialists criticized him and demanded an explanation for this "mysterious meeting" between the dictator and "the president of Europe".
Carlos Carnero, representing the Spanish socialist delegation to the European Parliament, was clear in his statements about the summit. "We are demanding all possible information from the president of the Commission and its members. It is nothing less than surprising that a man who has rejected all the procedures of democratic control established by the European Union - which is the case with the last legislative elections in March 1999 and municipal elections in May 2000 - is meeting with someone who by many citizens is seen as the president of Europe". According to Carnero, it is more than evident that Obiang does not accomplish any of the promises which he already made to the previous president of the European Union, Jaques Santer, in 1997. "We are asking, one more time, that Teodoro Obiang accomplishes all his promises made before in concrete action, and that it doesn't rest in mere words, which has been the case so far." Thus, Carnero concluded his declaration warning Prodi, "he should not fall into the same mistakes as Santer. At that stage, we were satisfied with only expressions of good faith from both sides." The whole situation reminded very much of Obiang's 1997 visit to Brussels, when he managed to make the European Commission lift the ban on economic aid to Equatorial Guinea, a ban which was established in 1993 as a response to the human rights situation and the total lack of democratisation. Basically, in this meeting Obiang managed to convince Santer, solely due to his oral descriptions, that profound changes were taking place in his country, and thus obtained a temporary return in European economic aid. Based on this experience, it was obvious for most, which were the intentions of this new visit to Brussels. However, Prodi is not Santer. Therefore, the meeting resulted quite cold and distanced from both parts. Prodi after the summit told the press that Obiang had guaranteed him political changes in Equatorial Guinea. The overall conclusion was that "Brussels is willing to support the Guinean government." In this context, a European mission already has travelled to Malabo to establish the fundament of what is going to be a future development cooperation programme, which will focus on democratisation, human rights and poverty reduction. Obiang only found time for a quick statement, where he assured that there were no political prisoners in Equatorial Guinea, and that the daily news published by the European press about his country are far from based on the reality in Equatorial Guinea. Obiang did, however, not address the matter that foreign journalists are not allowed to enter Equatorial Guinea, that the national press, to the degree it exists, is heavily censured and that it is strictly forbidden even to enter the country with any foreign newspaper. Prodi's "mysterious meeting" with Obiang indeed produces more questions than answers about the ambiguous European policy towards Equatorial Guinea. In general, the European Union had learned by the blunders made by Santer, and the European aid to Guinea is on a very low level, compared to other African countries. As human rights violations are that comprehensive in Equatorial Guinea, it remains to see if the European mission now investigating in Malabo will accept minor positive changes or if it will demand a more profound change. While European aid to Equatorial Guinea is on a minimum level, the economical transactions never have been higher. Traditionally, the European countries have imported agricultural products (mostly cocoa, coffee and timber) and exported manufactured commodities - all on a small scale due to the small scale of the Guinean economy. The last four years, however, Equatorial Guinean exports to the European Union have increased more than tenfold and imports from the European Union have increased fourfold. This is due to the new oil boom in Equatorial Guinea, were Europe has become the main market for Guinean crudes. European policies towards Guinea indeed are ambiguous.
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