The European Union (EU) and Belgian envoys to the East African Community (EAC) have pledged to support the regional body’s activities.

The EU Ambassador to Tanzania and the EAC Roeland van de Geer Paul and his Belgian counterpart Paul Cartier made the pledges as they separately presented their credentials to EAC Secretary General Amb Dr Richard Sezibera, in Arusha, Tanzania.

Amb van de Geer noted that the EU’s assistance to the EAC was broad covering almost all sectors of the integration agenda, reaffirming that the EU would continue providing this support. He urged the EAC to identify and prioritize the areas in which it would require increased support from the EU.

Amb Sezibera and Amb van de Geer agreed to hold bilateral talks to re-examine the cooperation framework between the EAC and the EU with the goal of making improvements, with technical teams from both sides exploring areas for future cooperation.

Amb van de Geer conveyed the EU’s condolences to the EAC and the family of the late Ms. Isabelle Wafubbwa, the Principal Political Affairs Officer, at the Community who passed on recently. He described Ms. Wafubbwa as having been instrumental in cooperation between the two regional economic communities especially in the field of political integration.

On his part Ambassador Cartier said his country was keen on strengthening her relations with the Community, by being part of the solution to various challenges facing the EAC.

In his remarks, Dr Sezibera thanked the Belgian government for her offer of additional support to the EAC, adding that a framework of agreement for cooperation will be developed between Belgium and the Community.

The Secretary General hailed Belgium for her contribution to the Partnership Fund, which has enabled the EAC to undertake programmes and projects in various sectors.

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The 17^th Ordinary East African Community (EAC) Heads of State Summit is scheduled for February 29, in Arusha, Tanzania, with top on the agenda the consideration of reports by the EAC Council of Ministers on the negotiations on the admission of the Republic of South Sudan into the Community.

Other issues to be discussed include Sustainable Financing Mechanisms for the EAC, the EAC Institutional Review, and Council reports on: the Model, Structure and Action Plan of the EAC Political Federation; Implementation of the Framework for Harmonized EAC Roaming Charges; Modalities for Promotion of Motor Vehicle Assembly in the region and Reduction of the Importation of Used Motor Vehicles from Outside the Community, and; the Promotion of the Textile and Leather Industries in the region, and stopping importation of Used Clothes, Shoes and Other Leather Products from outside the region.

The Summit is also expected to deliberate on a report by the Council on the verification exercise for the admission of the Republic of Somalia into the EAC.

The Heads of State are expected to launch the new International East African e-passport (electronic-passport) during their meeting.

The Summit will be preceded by a meeting of the EAC Council of Ministers that will take place

Meanwhile, Sweden has pledged to continue supporting the East African Community integration process, with
the Swedish Ambassador to Tanzania and the EAC Ambassador Katarina Rangnitt, saying cooperation among the five EAC Partner States was crucial to relations between Sweden and East Africa.
Amb Rangnitt was speaking when she presented her credentials to the EAC Secretary General, Amb Dr Richard Sezibera at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
Sweden has over the past nine years disbursed generous financial support amounting to 7,225,155 Swedish Kroner (US$851,676) to the EAC, monies that have been channeled through the EAC Partnership Fund.
Welcoming the Swedish envoy, Amb Dr Sezibera thanked Sweden for her support to the Community over the years noting that the Swedish support has been used for among other things the negotiations of the Economic Partnership Agreements between the EAC and the EU as well as boosting the health sector in the region.
Amb. Sezibera said the Partnership Fund has been used to finance not just the activities of the EAC Secretariat but the Community’s specialized institutions such as the Lake Victoria Basin Commission and the Inter-University Council of East Africa.
The Secretary General briefed Amb. Rangnit on the progress of the EAC integration saying the Community had made many achievements since the signing of the Treaty for the Establishment of the EAC on 30th November, 1999.
Amb. Sezibera said the EAC was seeking to ensure that the regional airspace was a unified territory throughout East Africa.

“As we increasingly become an effective Customs Union on the ground, we shall have to do the same for East Africa’s Airspace,” he said, adding that you cannot have a Customs Union on the ground only.

The Secretary General said the Community requires a lot of support to facilitate trade in services noting that significant progress had already been recorded in the free movement of goods as enshrined in the Common Market Protocol.

He pointed out other achievements as the reduction of Non-Tariff Barriers to the free movement of goods, the convertibility of the Partner States national currencies and cooperation in the development of infrastructure.

“Our Infrastructure programmes are largely on track. Many of the One Stop Border Posts have been completed, and are being operationalized. I congratulate the Partner States for ratifying the One Stop Border Bill, and the Axle Weight Control Bill. This puts our Community in good stead to strengthen the operations of our Customs Union,” he said.

He disclosed that the EAC Heads of State Summit had agreed on a 10-year Infrastructure Development Strategy which among other things lays emphasis on public-private partnership investments in railways, roads, ports and energy in the region.

Amb Rangnitt was accompanied by Mr Ludvig Bontell, the Political and Commercial Affairs attaché at the Swedish Embassy in Dar es Salaam.

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Five African Presidents designated by the African Union to find a lasting solution to the escalating political standoff and violence in Burundi are expected in the country between February 25 and 26.

According to media reports South Africa President Jacob Zuma is expected to lead his counterparts: Muhammad Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania; Macky Sall of Senegal; Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon and Hailemariam Desalgn of Ethiopia ‘to assist with addressing the political situation’.

Burundi descended into unrelenting violence last year, following the announcement by President Pierre Nkurunziza, that he would seek another term in office after the expiry of a ten-year tenure, enshrined in the country’s Constitution.

The visit of the AU presidential team that was tasked by the 25th Africa Union Summit of the Heads of States in early February will follow that of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who arrived in the strife-ravaged country today and is expected to hold talks with President Nkurunziza tomorrow. Nkurunziza has already rejected plans by the African Union to send peacekeepers to ease tensions in the Great Lakes nation, which diplomats fear is sliding toward another civil war.

More than 400 people have been killed since April when Nkurunziza said he would run for a third term, a move opponents dismissed as unconstitutional and sought to prevent by staging street protests.

And now both the United Nations and the African Union are under intense pressure to halt the violence that has engulfed Burundi a decade and a half after the country’s belligerent opponents signed a peace agreement in Arusha, Tanzania in 2000.

Meanwhile, three people were today killed in gun and grenade attacks in Burundi, just hours before the arrival of Ban Ki-moon, who is trying to end the bloodshed over President Nkurunziza’s disputed re-election.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks but the government says there are now three rebel outfits fomenting violence, including two made up of renegade soldiers.

The opposition also accuses government troops of arbitrary arrests, disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

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The South Sudan government has come out with a proposal seeking to conduct a referendum to determine the number of states through which the country should be governed in a move which is not provided for in the peace agreement it signed with opposition factions in August last year.

Speaking at a public briefing over the weekend in the national capital, Juba, information and broadcasting minister, Michael Makuei Lueth, said the government would not revoke the decision of the president to create more states unless a nationwide referendum is conducted to determine the number of states.

The government official spokesperson was reacting to criticism at the Sunday occasion by Ismail Suleiman, the Secretary General of the Communist Party in South Sudan, who questioned the basis of the creation of 28 states.

According to Suleiman, the government should revoke the creation of more states and return the country to be governed through 10 states which are constitutionally recognized by the agreement and 2011 transitional constitution.

“If you look at how this issue of 28 states came out, you see that nothing was followed. There were no criteria used. Some people just decided to go to the president and told him to create more states and he did it because these are the people who are close to him,” said Suleiman.

“But that is not how the country should be run. He is not the president of individuals. He is the president of the whole country and when there is something to be done for the country, the whole nation should be consulted so that the views of the people are heard because this is about their affairs. It is not about individuals,” he further charged.

But in an attempt to defend the decision of the president, minister Lueth claimed the decision was made because it was a popular desire and the government was now ready to allow the people to decide on the number of states they wanted.

The minister claimed that the government led by President Salva Kiir and armed opposition of SPLM-IO led by Riek Machar were on the same page on creation of more states but differed on the number of states to be created.

“We have to be very clear. The SPLM-IO had not dropped its proposed 21 states as it is claimed by others. When the SPLM-IO members of the advance team came to Juba, they sent the list of 21 members going to 21 states. If the SPLM-IO talks of 21 states and the government created 28 states, then all of us have agreed on the creation of states,” Lueth explained.

“We only differ on the number but opened for increment and this can be done through participation of the people. There will need to be a referendum so that the people themselves decide at the referendum the number of states they want,” he said.

Lueth added that if they decide to increase the number or reduce then that will be decided by the outcome of the referendum, adding that he believes the people will demand for more states.

During the peace negotiations in Addis Ababa, SPLM-IO proposed creation of 21 states based on 21 old colonial districts with their historical boundaries. The government however refused creation of more states, saying it was not time to create more states or to establish federal system of governance.

However, 39 days after signing the August 2015 peace agreement based on the 10 states, the government unilaterally decreed the creation of 28 states. The decision attracted condemnation from opposition and international community which called for the government to suspend their operationalization until a boundary commission agrees on the number of states and their boundaries.

According to a communiqué released by IGAD, which mediated the peace agreement, if the parties will not agree on the number of states, they will revert to the 10 states.

However, there is no provision for a referendum in the peace agreement.

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is expected in the South Sudan capital, Juba, Thursday, his second visit since the country gained its independence in 2011.

Ban’s visit comes as implementation of the peace agreement signed last August between President Salva Kiir and his former vice president, Riek Machar, is proceeding only slowly.

Machar, the South Sudan Vice President designate, has reportedly said he will only travel to Juba to form a national unity government when nearly 3,000 of his troops and police are in the capital, with a further 1,200 police deployed to Bor, Malakal and Bentiu.

South Sudan’s information minister, Michael Makuei, said the government would update the UNSG about the efforts being made in the implementation of the agreement up to this moment. He also added that the SG will be informed ‘about the role of the United Nations Mission in the Republic of South Sudan (UNMISS) and what they are doing’.

“The government of the Republic of South Sudan highly welcomes the visit of the Secretary General because this is where he will get the real facts on the ground. It seems very clear he is expressing his disappointment but it seems it’s not clear to him who is responsible for the delay in the implementation of the agreement,” Makuei added.

He also said another condition being made by Machar is there must be conducive atmosphere in Juba before his return to the capital but hastened to add that the vice-president designate is not the one to determine when conditions are conducive in the capital.

Former Botswana president Festus Mogae, who is chairperson of the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission – the head of an international group monitoring South Sudan’s peace process – told the UN Security Council last Friday he will propose security arrangements to spur the return of rebel leader Machar as vice president.

Mogae said the return of Machar is a critical step to launching a national unity government that would eventually deal with South Sudan’s rising violence and ‘humanitarian catastrophe’.

Mogae also told the UN Security Council a deadly attack last week on a UN peacekeeping compound where civilians had taken refuge in Malakal, the capital of oil-producing Upper Nile state, demonstrated the continuing violence in South Sudan.

He also pointed to a worrying escalation of fighting in Western Bahr El Ghazal and Western Equatoria.

Mogae said the large deployment being requested by Machar does not comply with a prior agreement on security arrangements.

“I plan to offer a compromise proposal on security arrangements for Juba sufficient to ensure security for Dr Machar to return, and which would consequently allow for the formation of the transitional government,” Mogae said.

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