OPENING
REMARKS BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE MIXED COMMISSION AND SPECIAL
REPRESENTATIVE
OF THE SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE
UNITED NATIONS, MR. AHMEDOU OULD-ABDALLAH
*
Yaounde,
5 August 2003
As this fifth meeting of the
Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission opens today, I wish to thank the Heads
of the Cameroonian and Nigerian delegations, His Excellency Mr. Amadou
Ali, Minister of State in charge of Justice, Keeper of the Seals of
Cameroon, and His Excellency Prince Bola Ajibola (CFR), former Minister of
Justice and Attorney-General of the Republic of Nigeria, for their kind
words addressed to me. I also wish to say how happy I am to see that
contact and dialogue have resumed, in an irreversible way, between
Cameroon and Nigeria. For, beyond any signed agreements, it is that
rapprochement between the two countries that matters most. A rapprochement
that has, in fact, greatly contributed to the advances made by the Mixed
Commission towards fulfilling its mandate. The understanding and
commitment shown by the Heads of the Cameroonian and Nigerian delegations
are indeed central to our efforts to help make this region a pole of
stability and peace in Africa.
In line with a decision made by the
Mixed Commission at its previous meeting in Abuja, the pace of our work
has been picking up speed. Since 12 June, your Sub-Commission on
demarcation and your Sub-Commission on Affected Populations have each met
twice, once in Dakar in early July and once here in Yaounde over the last
few days. I take great pleasure in announcing that both Sub-Commissions
have made significant progress towards achieving their respective
mandates, and that the progress thus achieved brings us significantly
closer to our goal, which is to help implement the 10 October 2002 ruling
of the International Court of Justice.
On 1 July 2003, your Sub-Commission on
demarcation met to consider the important issue of financing the
demarcation exercise, the estimated total cost of which is close to US$ 12
million. It adopted a document that, once endorsed by the Mixed
Commission, will be submitted to a number of friendly countries and
international organizations as part of our effort to mobilize funds. Still
on 1 July, in Dakar, Cameroon announced that it had deposited its US$ 1.25
million contribution to the United Nations Trust Fund. Nigeria followed
suit soon thereafter. It is therefore a total of US$2.5 million that
Cameroon and Nigeria have deposited to the United Nations Trust Fund in
order to launch the demarcation exercise. That amount will allow us to
operationalize the first phase of the demarcation process, i.e. the
acquisition and transformation of satellite imagery.
I also wish to let you know that on 4
August in Yaounde the Sub-Commission on Demarcation announced the
composition of its Joint Technical Team in charge of monitoring the
demarcation exercise in the field. This is another significant advance
towards achieving our mandate.
I shall now turn to the progress made
by your other subsidiary body, the Sub-Commission on Affected Populations,
towards achieving its own mandate. That mandate, as you will recall, is to
identify the affected populations, assess their situation and consider
modalities relating to the protection of their rights. It is most
legitimate to take those populations into account. In Dakar, on 2 and 3
July, the Sub-Commission made advances in identifying the issue of the
definition of affected populations. Here in Yaounde, on 31 July, 1 and 2
August, it better identified the issue of their rights. Above all,
however, it adopted a detailed programme of work that includes a proposed
calendar of field visits that is submitted to you today for your approval.
According to that calendar, the first field visit will head for Lake Chad
next month, and the Sub-Commission will submit a progress report to the
Mixed Commission at its sixth meeting in October 2003. Other visits are
scheduled later in the land boundary area and to the Bakassi Peninsula.
The Sub-Commission is expected to submit its final report to the Mixed
Commission at the latter’s eighth meeting in February 2004. I need not
emphasize that that calendar represents a considerable achievement in
itself and that it opens up the most positive prospects.
Given the scarce time left before the
dates envisaged for the visit to Lake Chad and the scope of the
preparations to be made ahead of that visit, the secretariat has decided
to anticipate the approval of the Mixed Commission and to start
immediately preparing a check list of requirements for the visit,
including logistical. Contact will be made soon with the delegations of
Cameroon and Nigeria to the Sub-Commission on Affected Populations to seek
their views and proposals.
I should not end this short review of
the activities carried out by your two sub-commissions without mentioning
the good work done by the Cameroonian and Nigerian delegations and without
paying tribute to their Heads. Allow me to mention here the names of Prof.
Maurice Kamto, Prof. A.I. Asiwaju and Prof. Cukwurah for the
Sub-Commission on Affected Populations, and of Ambassador Martin
Belinga-Eboutou and His Excellency Alhaji Dahiru Bobbo for the
Sub-Commission on Demarcation. We must encourage them to continue in the
same direction.
I shall now address an issue that I
deem particularly important, i.e. the Programme of Work of the Mixed
Commission. On 12 June at Abuja, the Mixed Commission decided to consider
that issue at its meeting in Yaounde. We have now received proposals from
both Parties regarding the Programme of work. I, for one, believe that
those proposals include a sufficient number of common – or at least
compatible – elements for us to reach an agreement within the next two
days. The Programme of Work to be adopted will need both to take into
account the views of each Party and to allow us to launch irrevocably the
process of implementing the judgement of the International Court of
Justice.
The proposals from the Parties address
several vital issues. I would like to briefly comment on two of those
issues that I believe to be particularly relevant at this point, i.e. the
issue of the withdrawal of administrations, military forces and police,
and the issue of the maritime boundary.
Regarding withdrawal of
administrations, military forces and police, I wish to recognize the
contribution of the Nigerian Government, which opens the way to their
withdrawal from the Lake Chad area by the end of this year. The amount of
preparations and planning entailed cannot be overemphasized. Together, we
need to consider how we shall proceed. That is why I shall suggest that
our Mixed Commission put together a Working Group to consider every aspect
of the withdrawal of the Nigerian civil administration, military forces
and police from the Lake Chad area. We will need to find a constructive
approach that will not upset the interests of the affected populations.
Obviously, the experience gained as we plan for and implement this first
withdrawal exercise will facilitate, with the necessary adjustments, the
subsequent phases of our work.
The other issue I wish to raise with
regard to our Programme of Work is the maritime boundary. Let me point out
that, on that issue, we are rather lagging behind the leaders of Cameroon
and Nigeria. As early as 4 February 2003, in his keynote address delivered
at the opening ceremony of the second meeting of the Mixed Commission in
Abuja, the Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His
Excellency Mr. Atiku Abubakar, proposed that the question be addressed. On
2 April 2003, the Prime Minister of Cameroon, His Excellency Mr. Peter
Mafany Musonge, welcomed that proposal. Accordingly, delimitation of the
maritime boundary has now been included in the programmes of work proposed
by the two delegations.
It is now incumbent on the Mixed
Commission to translate into action the will of the two Governments so
clearly expressed by their authorities at the highest level. A first step
could be for the Cameroonian and Nigerian delegations to submit to the
Secretariat of the Mixed Commission, before its sixth meeting in October
2003, a position paper on the issue. At its meeting in Abuja, the
Commission might put together a second Working Group, on the maritime
boundary, to consider the technical aspects of the issue and to submit a
proposal to the Mixed Commission at its December 2003 meeting.
I would like to close this statement
by referring to the confidence-building measures that Presidents Paul Biya
and Olusegun Obasanjo have urged us to implement and develop. In my view,
that is a vital aspect of the mandate of the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed
Commission. We need to make more progress in strengthening those
confidence-building measures, so that the work of the Mixed Commission
bring the Cameroonian and Nigerian populations even closer together, and
that the affected populations among them feel reassured.
Foremost among those measures is the
planned summit meeting of the Heads of State of the countries that are
members of the Lake Chad Basin Commission. The Mixed Commission not only
endorsed the idea at its second meeting, in Abuja, but also sent a joint
mission to the LCBC Secretariat in N’Djamena on 13 March 2003. You will
recall that your Commission followed with attention the reports made by
the members of that joint mission at its third meeting. What could we do
to give renewed impetus to that project?
Secondly, there is the cross-border
road project, which initially involved the Mamfe-Ikom road and was
extended by successive meetings of the Mixed Commission to Mamfe-Abakaliki
and Abakaliki-Mutengene. Having established a good working relationship
with the World Bank and the African Development Bank, we should now make
the most of that relationship, especially on the Cameroonian side.
Thirdly, I welcome the mention by
Cameroon, in its proposed programme of work, to set up an unofficial early
warning system in case of natural or other disasters, which could be
extended, more generally, to the protection of the environment and common
ecosystems. We need to follow up this project.
As a fourth confidence-building
measure, there is of course the strengthening of cross-border cooperation
along the “more than 1700-kilometer long” boundary. I mention that
figure with confidence, since it was agreed at Dakar between the
delegations of Cameroon and Nigeria to the Sub-Commission on Demarcation.
There again, I would want to see a reinvigoration of efforts made to
identify cross-border projects that would turn that extensive border into
a bridge between peoples and a zone of cooperation.
I would like to conclude on a somewhat
emotional appeal. As some of you may know, I came in from Accra, Ghana,
where I participated for three weeks in discussions over the crisis in
Liberia with President Olusegun Obasanjo and former President Abdusalami
Abubakar. Throughout these negotiations, I was astounded by the huge costs
of peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, compared to the cost of
preventive diplomacy and peacemaking.
The irony is that it may be easier to
find the huge amounts of money needed to fund expensive peace-keeping
forces, shuttle diplomacy and humanitarian relief operations after a
conflict, than the considerably smaller amounts needed for the kind of
peaceful settlement of disputes for which Cameroon and Nigeria are
becoming role models in our continent.
As your two Governments embark on the
tasks agreed on at this meeting, they will undoubtedly be faced with costs
– such as making available a helicopter to visit a given area, hiring an
interpreter, funding an unscheduled meeting, etc. – which will be
difficult to meet out of strained budgets. I would therefore appeal to the
donor community to realize that, heavy as they may seem today, these costs
are only a fraction of the costs of conflict. Peace does have a price, and
that price is not cheap. But it is always cheaper than conflict. Financial
costs must not be allowed to deter us from our worthy goal of peace and
cooperation throughout the over 1700 kilometers of the Cameroon-Nigeria
border!
