SA is not anti-US: Mbeki
18 February 2003
President Thabo Mbeki told Parliament on Tuesday that South Africa has neither the desire nor the intention to become enemies with the United States, adding that the government has continued to ensure good relations with George W Bush's administration.
Mbeki was responding to questions in Parliament on Tuesday following his State of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament last week. In his address, Mbeki said that the government has "taken the positions we have, not to oppose or support any country, nor to seek any glory. We have done what we have because, as South Africans and Africans, we know the pain of war and the immeasurable value of peace."
Mbeki told Parliament that South Africa was sending an envoy to the oil-rich country to share with the government, scientists, engineers, technicians and people of Iraq its experience relevant to the mission of eradicating weapons of mass destruction, under international supervision.
South Africa voluntarily destroyed its arsenal in the early 1990s following the transition from an apartheid form of government to a democratic one.
The US has called on the Gulf nation to dispose of its weapons of mass destruction or face a possible war.
South Africa, which chairs the African Union and the Non-Aligned Movement, has called on members of the international community to act within the ambit of the UN and its Security Council.
Mbeki said that at all levels, the US administration was interacting with the South African government in an open, cooperative and supportive manner.
"At all times, the US has respected our right to hold our own views on any matter. When we have differed on any issue, there has never been any suggestion that it would starve us to force us to submit to its views," he said.
He added that on the matter of Iraq, South Africa was entirely at one with the US and the UN that Iraq should be free of weapons of mass
destruction, and welcomed and supported the decision of the government of the United States to refer the matter to the UN Security Council to ensure a peaceful, multilateral resolution.
In his address to the UN General Assembly in New York last year, Mbeki stressed the need to act according to the Millennium Declaration, in which world leaders reaffirmed their faith in the UN and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world.
"Under the leadership of the United Nations, we continue to strengthen the multilateral system of global governance as the only viable international response to all our challenges," Mbeki had said.
Source: BuaNews
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