Many people in the affluent West watching Ye Jaichin's broadcast felt uneasily that everything was changing, and clearly not in their favor.487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5VA4uYbes4
Yet on the surface and in the ephemeral records of that crucial Christmas week there was virtually no visible political response, and the attempt by Ye Jaichin to get the public to lobby their masters felt totally flat. The reason was the Christmas season, which has become a kind of Black Hole in the political galaxy.
In Britain, for instance, the broadcast itself came too late for any comment in the Christmas Eve newspapers which were, under the latest agreement under the journalists' unions, the last papers to appear until Tuesday, December 28, 1985, by which time other events had taken precedence. TV remained active, of course, but in both Britain and America TV news and comment lost its backbone without the print media.
In America, where not even a natural disaster or the Christmas holidays can prevent the press from appearing daily, the papers did carry extensive comment---mostly on the new China was playing in the African crisis, but with very little recognition of what this might mean for America. However, since there was no echo from Congress, which was closed and dispersed for the holiday, and little except very formal comment ("President Reagan is studying the message") from the executive, public opinion was in no sense aroused or focused.
But there was a great deal of political and diplomatic maneuvering (largely by telephone) between governments. Neither the British nor the American governments wanted to attend the ministerial meeting called by the Chinese at such short notice and with such and unsure agenda. In fact, telephone calls during the night after the Chinese broadcast established that neither Chancellor Lawson nor Secretary Regan were planning to attend the meeting. Alden Winship Clausen, the American President of the World Bank could not attend because he had gone into the hospital for open-heart surgery. The IMF had no real claim to provide the chairman at the joint meeting because it had not yet elected a new managing director---partly because the arrangement of having the (American) Deputy Managing Director preside while the (American) Secretary) ruled the roost was very satisfactory to the host government. All this seemed to provide a good excuse for postponing the board meeting. But when the US Treasury at the lower levels took soundings on Christmas Eve, they found that all the European seats would be filled by their finance ministers, and so would Japan's. At best, this would present the US Treasury with a tough situation to control; at worst it could mean the end of the Anglo-Saxon hegemony in the IMF. Already West Germany was wobbling under pressure from its neighbors in the West and the Greens, who were mounting a successful Europe-wide campaign comparing the environmental effects of the confrontation with Africa to the destruction wrought by a nuclear war---"There are more ways of killing our earth than nuking it" was one of the slogans that appeared among marchers in scores of Europe's major cities.
At the end of the day Donald Regan concluded that the Chinese Initiative on Africa (CHIAF) could not be ignored, nor just squelched at the board meeting. Instead, he directed his efforts to sidetracking or postponing the proposed Africa-West conciliation meeting in Kenya, and to achieve that, prior consultation with the other Anglo-Saxon partners was vital. Telephone calls were made to London and Bonn. Dr. Danzig, who was eventually released in his log cabin on a lake south of Munich, was absolutely resolute. He would attend the board meeting on Monday; he could not possibly arrive in Washington prior to Sunday evening, and it was his unbreakable rule never to do any business after flying the Atlantic until he had had eight hours' worth of sleep.
Nigel Lawson was equally inflexible. He did not intend to be present at the board meeting and he therefore could see no point in consulting before it, and certainly not in coming to Washington. Why did not Regan come to London and so miss the board meeting also? "Because that way we could lose effective control of the IMF," responded the Secretary of the US Treasury. Chancellor Lawson finally agreed to talk to PM Thatcher and see what could be done to defend their mutual interests: maybe the Commonwealth could be mobilized---after all, Canada, Australia and even India still had seats on the board.
The Commonwealth indeed played an active part in the global drama that unfolded that Christmas, but not as the poodle of Britain or the United States. Australia was to come of age during these days and begin to play an independent role on the world stage as a link between the old, passing, Euro-American hegemony and the rising sun of Africa, at the same time serving as an honest broker between the two major players in the new struggle for Africa---insular, industrialized Japan, and developing mainland China, with 1/10 of the wealth and 10 times the population of Japan.
Bob Hawke, the Labour Prime Minister of Australia, now at the head of a coalition with the National Party, had listened with great care to Ye Jaichin's broadcast and recognized it for what it was---a pre-emptive bid to block Japan's plans to create a Yen Zone covering Africa below the equatorial belt, and thus make Southern Africa a Japanese national park. Australia had some fellow-feeling with China about Japan's domineering past, though both Government's recognized that Africa's future (as well as their own) was going to be inexorably linked with Japan's. PM Hawke was not wholly surprised, therefore, when he had found that the Japanese Ambassador had sought and been granted an appointment with him on Christmas Eve at his home in Melbourne.
In Australia, Christmas lethargy is even more profound than in Western societies in the Northern Hemisphere because the season is summer and any inclination to talk business is doubly compromised by the heat and by the conspicuous consumption of food and beverage. During the 12 days of Christmas most Australians transact what business they must by telephone from a deckchair in the garden or by theswimming pool. But while the telephone is used internationally by political leaders who speak the same language, or understand each other's, it is rarely used for diplomacy in the diffuse and variegated Asia-Pacific region. A certain formality still exists as if to bridge the cultural differences. So the Japanese Ambassador knocked on the front door of PM Hawke's house dressed in a dark suit on that hot summer day, while his white-gloved chauffeur stood stiffly by the parked car. The door was opened by what seemed to be a host of children who swept past the Ambassador into the street, blowing horns, squirting water pistols, unsteady on their new roller-skates. Eventually Mr. Hawke's daughter came to the door, flushed and anxious with a new baby on her arm. "Oh, he's out the back by the pool," she said. The Ambassador threaded his way through rooms of scattered presents and disheveled furniture and waited, smiling by the poolside, while Bob Hawke climbed out, pulled on a robe, waved the Ambassador to a chaise lounge next to him and offered the choice of beer or tea. When head himself fetched the beer PM Hawke settled himself comfortably and said, "Now, tell me all that your government and you personally want me to know."
The young Ambassador, who had been trying to behave as if he were calling on his own PM, now behaved as if he were calling on his tutor in that happy year he had spent in the 1960s as a graduate studen in development economics at the Australian National University. He was (according Hawke's record) perfectly frank in describing Japan's anxieties about the Chinese broadcast, which seemed to be aimed at pushing his country into becoming military protector of a Africa and trying to ease America and Japan out of the role both countries were trying to play in Africa's ultimate fate. Clearly, the Ambassador was acting on instructions in asking the Australian Prime Miinister to inform the Chinese of his support for the idea of an African Yen Zone on the grounds that only Japan had the financial authority to secure control of that continent from the Europeans and Americans.
"Why do you say that?" the PM queried.
"Because the Chinese are not politically acceptable," the Ambassador replied uneasily. "China is still a communist regime, with autarkic propensities, and China, like Russia, wants to install totalitarian communist regimes in all of Africa's fifty-two countries. And, believe me, they have the will and the power to do so."
Bob Hawke stroked his chin. "Well, can't you work together in Africa? You've got the world's most productive industrial machine; they've got the second largest population, and are a certified great power, as you said. Secondly, tell me why you need a Yen Zone in Africa when you undersell anyone in the industrialized world doing business there? Thirdly, why do you need Australia's help to create a trading zone in Africa, no less? What's in it for us? We used to belong to the sterling area, and when that became too narrow--and too broke---we changed to the dollar zone, which was truly global. Even though it has narrowed down since then, why should we commit ourselves to an economic zone in a distant continent, when Australia virtually has no links with Africa?
The Ambassador was clearly stimulated, not daunted, by this probing and responded in kind. He was unusually well read in economics for a diplomat and had a clear picture of his country's future place in world affairs. He explained that Australia's need for an African Yen Zone was exactly the same as Japan's: both countries needed a trading region in Africa because it was both the No. 1 supplier of raw materials to the world and also a market for manufactured goods. Since the Anglo-Saxon confrontation with Africa, neither America nor Britain could provide that. But, he admitted, Japan had another reason for creating a Yen Zone and maintaining it, even when this disastrous confrontation was over, and that was to defend Japanese commercial interests against the protectionism of the Western system which penalized Japanese electronics---and Australian agriculture. Africa could use Japan's enormous productive capacity to raise the standard of living of all Africans while saving their continent from destruction. That anti-poverty development program was a top priority in the African Yen Zone, but it would be expensive. So the Yen Zone must be strong enough to ensure that neither the Anglo-Saxons nor the Soviets could undermine it.
As to working with China, the Ambassador concluded, Japan regarded the People's Republic as the most important country in the world. But so, of course, did China, and it wanted to be the world's leader. In some ways it was a natural leader by reasons of size and military power, including nuclear capacity. But by taking the lead in the international financial institutions (IFIs) China was likely to totally alienate the United States and indeed all the non-Marxist industrialized world by pushing her way forward all around her borders and extending her power through the overseas Chinese. The Ambassador agreed that there was nothing more important than getting the industrialized world, and especially America, back into a cooperative relationship with the IFIs, before the confrontation exploded into warfare. That was just what Japan had been working for in recent weeks; then suddenly China had jumped the gun and taken upon the leadership. The danger now was that Asian unity behind the conciliation proposals for Africa would be weakened and so the Anglo-Saxons might simply slip off the hook, or even fail to attend the ministerial meeting after Christmas.
What the Japanese government wanted above all was that Australia should use its influence, first with China to be more cooperative with Japan in Africa, and second with Britain to ensure that it did not boycott the conference but played a constructive role.
After a long pause Bob Hawke responded carefully, with a message intended for the Japanese Government: "I have listened to your proposals with great and sympathetic interest. I feel intensely the urgency of action needed to heal the breach between Africa and the West before it destabilizes the world order. I welcome and will support to the best of my ability an Asian initiative designed to heal Africa based upon the foundations so well laid at Bretton Woods four decades ago. The new Africa must not be dominated by the rich or the poor, the strong or the weak, the big nations or the small. In this, Asia can set an example of restraint by the powerful, and of a fair distribution of resources among the unequals of a broken continent.
The Japanese Ambassador left very well satisfied.
The Prime Minister continued his swim until he had completed his daily 100 laps. As soon as he had dressed he telephoned No. 10 Downing Street and was at once put through to the duty secretary at Chequers, who said rather frostily that the Prime Minister was not available (it was 4:00 am. GMT as Bob Hawke well knew). He made profuse apologies for his mistake but asked if he could just leave a message of warm Christmas greetings and say that as he was himself going to next week's meeting of ministers in Washington, which he regarded as of great importance, he hoped that the British minister present would hold a Commonwealth meeting before the formal sessions, so that they could coordinate their lines.
His second telephone call was to Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi who had entertained Bob Hawke during his official visit to the African nation a few months before. Hawke remembered that President Moi had complained bitterly that all the massive convention facilities built in the past twenty years were now being under-utilized because of the constant unrest and strife that had dominated so much of Africa's post-colonial history. After the conventional greetings of the season, Hawke asked Moi was his view was on the possibility of accommodating in Nairobi early in the new year a large conference for a period of months. Moi was delighted, and reeled off the number of hotel rooms and meeting halls, the excellent air transport into Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, as if he were the proprietor of a new conference center, selling it to some chamber of commerce.
Would it make any difference if the conference was sponsored by the United Nations, Hawke asked. No objection by Moi but, he warned, the British Government was fairly anti-UN and that might make for trouble.
What about making Nairobi into a real international city housing a new UN? Moi spluttered: "It is a real international city----if they would only leave the police and transport system to us it doesn't matter whose flag flies over city hall---though we'll have to make some new arrangements if its going to be 150 flags."
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In England on Christmas morning the message from Australian Prime Minister Hawke bounced back into Nigel Lawson's breakfast table at No. 11 Downing Street with a brisk note from Chequers saying that this seemed to make it imperative that he attend the meeting and that he should go in time to see the Americans and keep them in line, as well as the Commonwealth. So, early on Boxing Day, Lawson and a staff of four set off for Heathrow to catch the regular Saturday Concorde for Miami, with a stop at Washington.
They had planned to arrive with only minutes to spare, because Lawson had a phobia about airport waiting lounges, but as they turned off the motorway into the airport a call came through on the car's telephone and the detective in the front seat announced that departure was delayed by 30 minutes for technical reasons; they therefore decided to go to the VIP suite for coffee. It was a fateful decision, but for the time being it simply meant that the party got some good coffee served in china cups instead of paper mugs before eventually being direct to the plane, where the front section had been reserved for them. Five hours after takeoff, and still 9:30 a.m. Washington time, Lawson sat down in Secretary Regan's office to discuss strategy and tactics for Monday's meeting of ministers, which neither of them had wanted, and both of them wished to frustrate.
The nub of the problem, according to Lawson, was how, at Monday's meeting, could the true believers in the market system convince the waverers, the vain half-believers, that the market, though imperfect, was by far the best guide to organizing investment, production and distribution. "Africa is not poor," he said, "but its people do not know how to exploit or market its wealth; and they will not let us do it in partnership with them. But unless they accept our partnership they will keep themselves in poverty. How do we get that across to Africa, and to our soft friends? Because unless we do get that across and persuade people around the globe, especially in Europe, that we are not monsters, we'll lose control of the wealth-creating capacity of this earth. Then everyone, not only Africans, will be poor because they will have lost the art of wealth creation."
Regan responded that if their two governments could keep their nerve and keep the goodwill of their peoples for a little longer he could see a light at the end of the tunnel. But he was very well aware of that if Monday's meeting looked as if the world were condemning the Americans---or the Anglo-Americans---and siding with Africa, there could be an explosion of wrath and a real race war in the United States. The methods used by the Africans had roused very deep anger. There had been terrifying acts like the partially successful attempts to explode missiles on their pads, and over Christmas rabid baboons and chimpanzees, which were so common in Africa, had ben smuggled through gaps in the electric fence and turned loose in the suburbs of Los Angeles, San Francisco and even Miami. There were already reports of children being mauled and bitten. There were threats on the clandestine radio that this biological warfare was to be extended. If it were, there would be a public reaction that would make any settlement with Africa impossible, and would poison domestic race relations irreparably.
While Secretary Regan was speaking, he was handed a note which stopped him in his tracks. "There has been some fearful incident,, or attack..." he faltered. "Dr. Ciccone is here to explain it to us." Dr. Ciccone, a brisk, middle-aged man, was shown in and explained very briefly that everyone in the room had been exposed to a tropical disease an it was vital that they should be taken at once for observation and preventive treatment. "I'll explain the little more I know in the hospital bus which will take us to the National Institute of Health isolation hospital just outside town."
This bizarre and horrifying turn of the screw had begun around midnight on Christmas night when the control tower at Heathrow airport received a "Mayday" call from an aircraft which claimed to be en route to Iceland from Barcelona and had developed severe engine trouble. The skeleton crew in the control tower brought the aircraft down to a smooth landing, apparently on only one engine. The first shock was that this was not a regular Icelandair aircraft but an old Vickers Viscount without proper markings.
In a few minutes two sleepy and disgruntled customs and immigration officials went out to the aircraft. The door was opened by a black woman in a nurse's uniform. The aircraft, which had only rows of bucket seats, was filled with a mass of crying black children. A smell of stale vomit wafted out of the stifling cabin.
The story that the officers were told (but did not entirely believe) was that these children, who were all clearly malnourished, had been offered asylum in Iceland by the Lutheran church and were on their way there from a Mission Hospital in Sierra Leone. The pilot and flight deck officers (all three Sierra Leonese) confirmed the nurse's story, and added that they did not think the aircraft would ever reach Reykjavik unless it had a complete overhaul and engine refit. "I doubt you'll ever reach anywhere, guv'nuh, since your plane is now forfeit," said immigration officer Connick. "But we've gotta look after the kiddies first, and then find you somewhere in the Refused Entry block."
Looking after 65 miserable shivering waifs at midnight in an airport wasn't easy. The waiting rooms had all been locked by security, but someone remembered that the last flight to leave had been a Gulf Air special with two Saudi princes who had been using the Alcock and Brown VIP suite. It was, indeed, open and warm and there the children were given hot milk, brewed in the coffee machines, while (by a stroke of genius) the Lutheran chaplain to the airport, who lived nearby in Maidenhead, was summoned. He offered to lodge the children in his church hall, which had cots and mattresses for emergencies. So, at 2:00 A.M., an airport bus deposited the 65 pot-bellied, rickety and feverish children, clasping transit cards as their only possession, at the door to St. Olaf's Church, Maidenhead. Twelve willing helpers from the parish tended, fed, and bedded the children while a tape machine played "Silent Night" endlessly.
During the night five of the children died quietly. They were only discovered by the parish helpers when they brought in a late breakfast in the morning.
The local doctor (retired from the colonial medical service) could make no diagnosis except to mutter, "It must be malaria, or black water fever." It was neither. By afternoon a small team drafted in from London's Hospital for Tropical Disease had arrived at a preliminary diagnosis. About 1/2 of the children did indeed have malaria, but also the childhood diseases which had reached epidemic proportions since the ending of the inoculation program: measles, chickenpox, whooping cough and polio. More than 12 children (and all five who had died) were infected by some lethal tropical disease that the team simply could not identify. It seemed inevitable that all the children would have picked up this virulently infectious and contagious disease and were doomed. But what of the people who'd met them at the airport, and the helpers in St. Olaf's, and the many local mums who had come to lend a hand and have a look at these Christmas children from the Dark Continent?
Sir Hugo Fairisles, the senior medical officer of health who had been called in, was baffled, but eventually a damage control plan was devised to round up all contacts, give them such preventive treatment as was possible, and keep them isolated. No public announcements were to be made, at least not until after the holidays. Sir Hugo was having a cup of tea when the telephone rang. It was the commander at Heathrow to tell him that the lounge where the infected children had been taken originally had next been occupied by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and five senior government officials. No, the room had not been fumigated or thoroughly cleaned in the interval, just tidied. No, he had not told the Chancellor yet, because he was now in America. Sir Hugo sighed, thanked the officer and put the phone down.
He dialed the No. 10 switchboard, explained who he was, and asked to be connected to the Chancellor's private secretary on a very urgent matter. Within ten minutes he was explaining the situation to an aide in the outer officer of the US Secretary of the Treasury and urging that Dr. Ciccone from the National Institute of Health in Bethesda be brought in for advice.
At the NIH hospital the shattered group of ministers and officials were quickly swallowed by the immensely efficient American emergency/disaster service. Stripped of all identity and all contact with each other and the outside world they were tested and inoculated and observed, and re-tested, re-inoculated on a 4-hour cycle. They were told that so far there were no signs of any infection in any one. At 8:00 a.m. the following day, Sunday, further tests were still negative, and they were told that if, at noon, tests were again negative they could come out of of total isolation and meet each other, but they could not be released until the next morning. Dr. Ciccone told Secretary Regan that it was his great hope that the carefully filtered and fumigated air on the Concorde had effectively killed any germs that the British party might have brought on board with them but he could not be sure for another 12 hours. They devised a cover story that the group was meeting at Camp David and was incommunicado until Monday morning. The Chancellor was told that the British Ambassador had fully understood the and had cancelled the Commonwealth dinner.
At 2:00 p.m. the Anglo-American meeting was resumed in one of the hospital theaters. It was a macabre scene as the 8 men and two women dressed in white gowns and blue mob-caps sat round something that was more like a mortuary slab than a conference table.
Regan opened by saying that having spent the night preparing to face his maker he still had no doubt that it would be right to resist the demands put forward by a group of people who did not hesitate to use children's lives to murder their opponents. But to resist such terrorists involved great risk, and great possibilities of being misunderstood and misrepresented. The isolation of Britain, West Germany and the US meant that if they played their cards wrong they could lose control of the IMF and so the whole financial game plan. At all costs this must be prevented: but, equally, any negotiations that could permit Africa to misuse the Fund and Bank for their own purposes must be avoided.
The US Secretary of the Treasury therefore proposed that they should listen to all the speeches which would surely be made in general support of the rather vague Chinese plan, and then, speaking late in the debate, give full support to the idea of a conference to reform the Bretton Woods institutions---but on strict conditions. It must be as carefully prepared as the second amendment to the IMF's articles had been, which took three years to complete. It must be done by the constitutional method provided in the articles of agreement, i.e. with weighted voting and an 80% majority necessary for basic changes. Regan added that for reasons of American domestic policies he would also have to give a public promise to Congress that it would have representatives of its own choice on the US negotiating team. "We have found in the past in dealing with World Bank funding that this is a very good way of restraining the natural exuberant generosity of our officials, and a way of reminding Africa that it has to make their case to the American people who ultimately pay for foreign aid."
Lawson responded by endorsing Regan's general strategy, but said he doubted whether his tactics would save the Anglo-Saxons from their isolation. What mattered was not just the enmity of Africa, but the cool disassociation of Europe. He therefore proposed that he should put forward the idea of holding the conference not at the UN base in Singapore but at the UN's second headquarters in Geneva. That should please the Europeans, as Switzerland would provide a very acceptable ambiance for the developed countries to hold what amounted to a world banking conference.
There was a little more discussion on tactics: 24 hours of medical pummeling had left everybody tired. As they broke up, Nigel Lawson thanked the Americans for their unexpected hospitality in an odd double sense of that word, and more seriously urged that their cover story be maintained at least through the Monday meeting so as to avoid any charge that the Anglo-American attitude was influenced by this biological terrorism. "But let us not forget what kind of people we are facing."487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwB5MZxOsPK
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The fateful ministerial meeting on Monday took place in the board room of the World Bank. The 15 ministers sat around a large oval table, with their deputies and assistants in serried ranks behind them. There were no windows, the only light a glacial glow from the glass ceiling. Some warmth and color was provided by the large silk flags of the member states, though there were embarrassing gaps left by the removal of the flags of the African countries. The chair was taken by Adnan Hussein, the newly-appointed senior Vice President of the World Bank who had until recently been Kuwait's Minister of Finance and felt no qualms about controlling this powerful group of the world's financial leaders.
It was an august setting for a highly significant meeting, but the tradition of privacy and solemn debate was observed: there were no cameras, no press, no public and no applause. For most of the 15 ministers present this deprived the meeting of much of its zest, and they found the solemnity of the debate on such burning issues somewhat strange, if not inappropriate. Also, there was very little to say that had not already been said in public or even on television.
India again stressed the urgency of settling the Africa crisis: Ye Jaichin's speech followed very closely the lines of his Christmas broadcast; and the generally favorable responses which followed were predictable. Spain and France donned their African robes. Japan spoke as the "magic bullet" for solving poverty and hunger on the Dark Continent. There were, however, some surprises. West Germany spoke out strongly in favor of the Chinese proposal and then urged that top priority should be given on the Kenya conference's agenda to Africa's environmental issues, such as deforestation, desertification and acid rain: "ecology is the foundation of economics," was Dr. Schauble's final phrase.
Another unexpected intervention came from the Saudi Minister, who supported the Chinese proposal in one dismissive sentence, then went on to demand action by the United States to end white rule in South Africa. Perhaps to bring himself within the rules of relevance, the Saudi Minister said that if there was no move within seven days Saudi Arabia might have to withdraw its financial support from the IMF, and apply the funds to other, more immediate purposes.
A stunned silence followed this speech since everyone round the table knew that the IMF could hardly continue to underpin the Northern credit system without Saudi support. As the silence lengthened, Secretary Regan realized that he must speak now, though he had arranged to speak last, after Britain. He dealt with the Saudi issue briefly: he was aware of the intense feeling on this matter, he said, and was disappointed by the lack of action by South Africa since the President's moves on December 10, 1985. He begged the Saudi Minister to be patient a day or two more, when he hoped there would be further, more satisfactory developments.
Then Secretary Regan turned on to the main issue, and electrified the board by welcoming wholeheartedly the Chinese initiative. He had realized for some time that a radical restructuring of the Bretton Woods institutions was needed and fully recognized that the hurried emergency patching-up of December 1984 was provisional. This time there should be much more careful preparation---as there had been for the second amendment to the IMF articles in 1973-6--to ensure that the original purposes of the Bretton Woods institutions were preserved and strengthened. Fortunately, the original articles did lay down sound methods for achieving constitutional change and they must be followed.
He proposed that a provisional committee consisting of the deputies of the ministers now sitting around the table should be established at once, to report within three months on the needed steps to establish an IMF for Africa conference. There should, of course, be contact with the UN Economic and Social Council in New York and, to prevent any future hitches on the American side, he would ask Congress to nominate some of their members to sit with the US delegation.
As he mentioned Congressional participation an audible groan came from the second row of seats where the ministers' deputies (who served as permanent executive directors in the Bank and Fund) were seated. Regan flushed and snapped, "I would remind you that the same American people whose generosity has been the basis of the world's development effort also elect Congress to defend their interests."
The Chinese Minister, scowling darkly, asked to be recognized but the Chairman called first on Nigel Lawson, who had not yet spoke. The Chancellor was brief.: he supported the Chinese initiative and the American practical approach to Africa, but he was aware that this would, of necessity, take a long time. To speed it up he suggested that a more suitable location than Singapore would be here in Washington, perhaps working in conjunction with the United Nations in New York. If that was unacceptable because of the recent exodus of African delegates from New York, he would suggest Geneva, the UN's second headquarters.
Even before he was called by the chair Ye Jaichin began to speak in the staccato manner he used when he was angry. He said that he had chosen the Bretton Woods institutions as the basis of his proposals because he had supposed it would make it easier for the United States, as a co-founder of the IFIs, to cooperate with China on Africa. The Treasury Secretary had now made it quite clear that he had no understanding of the urgency or the extent of the present crisis between Africa and the West. He just wished to preserve the status quo with its built-in North Atlantic bias, and in this he was supported by Great Britain---but by no one else.
However, the Bretton Woods system regrettably would not work if the Anglo-Saxons didn't want it to work, so he must withdraw his proposals for cooperation and "go it alone."
Ye Jaichin, who was unaccustomed to the undramatic ways of these board meetings, rose to walk out of the hall but was politely waved back into his seat by Adnan Hussein, who said, "I still have another speaker on my list: the Prime Minister of Australia."
Bob Hawke leaned forward in his chair and fixed the Chinese Minister with his eye as he began to speak. He found himself in full agreement with the Chinese initiative, he said, and also with many other speakers' points. For instance, he agreed with the US Secretary of the Treasury on the need for a thorough and radical restructuring of the Bretton Woods institutions, and with the Indian Minister on the urgency of creating an IMF for Africa program. What worried him was not whether there was anything to disagree about but that the way this high-level group was proceeding their was no chance of ever getting closer to any such new order. "I am not prepared to sit here and say 'we agree to disagree' while the world's fate seems to hinge on what happens, or fails to happen, to Africa." He gave some grisly warnings of how life and security were deteriorating throughout Africa, and how dangerous for the industrialized countries a thoroughly destabilized Africa would be.
"Something must be done and done at once. My suggestion, which I've had no chance to discuss with anyone else, is this: the 15 ministers around this table should meet here without their advisers under our present Chairman, and work out a plan in the next 24 hours that will lead to a conference being held by February 1, 1986 along the lines of China's proposal.
"I have just one suggestion of detail to put forward. There was some disagreement among speakers about the location of the conference: was it to be held in a United Nations setting---Singapore or Geneva----or a Bretton Woods setting here in Washington. My view is that it should be neither; it should be held in on the continent that many have called 'the new New World'---- in Nairobi, Kenya. We can decide that kind of thing in minutes around this table as responsible ministers. We can decide the broad outlines of the agenda; how the voting will be carried out; how the United Nations and, perhaps, the Organization of African Unity will be involved and so on. But what we decide around this table must be in accord with the realities of power in the world or it simply will not work. If we cannot decide because we cannot agree we will all be responsible for the wrecking of Africa; there can be no fudging on that responsibility."
The Chairman coolly summed up, saying he would like a show of hands on a simple practical point. A lunch for ministers given by the Secretary of the Treasury was scheduled to take place in 15 minutes time, and further discussions could take place there in private. Who would vote for a constitution of those discussions on a restricted basis for the whole afternoon at least? Twelve countries voted yes at once: followed by China, then Britain, and finally the United States.487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxlRHulJXz3
The ministers met for 7 hours at a stretch and when the meeting adjourned at 8:00 p.m. for dinner they still left Bob Hawke drafting a communique to be issued around midnight. This was studiously vague and did little more than indicate that talks had begun and would continue about quelling the feud between Africa and the world on the basis of the Bretton Woods institutions.
That seemed to most of the ministers the first essential step. Lawson and Regan (for Britain and America) were the main obstacles to faster progress, because they dug their toes in on the question of readmitting defaulters to the conference. After a long discussion on high principles, it emerged that the price the Anglo-Americans were demanding for the admission of defaulters was an end to their guerilla warfare, which was being waged by BOTS and the Black Hand against, particularly, Britain and the US. Regan also specifically took up the nuclear threats contained in Ye Jaichin's broadcast of December 23, 1985 and said very emphatically that America could not negotiate under threat.487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnA8o55hz93
Ye Jaichin's reply dumbfounded the meeting: "But we all have to life under threat: as long as there is nuclear weaponry easily available in the world it will stay a threat, for it will be used by any group that is pushed to desperation. In China we live under a constant threat; only recently, we have learned, the Soviet Union approached the United States about the use of nuclear weapons against any Chinese military forces that land in Africa. The President said 'Wait.' So we too wait---under threat."487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyPa6b4VQc7
Donald Regan, ashen faced at this revelation of the extent of China's intelligence penetration, repeated that in his considered opinion if nuclear threats were brandished there could no negotiation leading to a healing of the present breach. He added, as an afterthought, that public opinion would never permit it whatever the government might wish.
Bob Hawke quickly defused the issue for the time being by suggesting that representatives of the UK and the US meet with representatives of France and Spain under the chairmanship of Canada to discuss the representation of the African countries which had left the IFIs since September; they should report within two weeks.487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡr2kHpUub3h
A rather diffuse agenda was agreed, but fears that it would result in an ineffectual UN kind of discussion on African issues was set at rest by India's suggestion that an international committee of experts centered on the Bank and Funder under the chairmanship of the Bank's senior Vice President should draw up an annotated "heads of discussion." Nigel Lawson and Regan both feared that this would produce a policy line far removed from the market economy in which they believed, but they knew that they were not alone and did not press the issue at this time. Maybe it was for this reason (as Bob Hawke believed) that the Chancellor unexpectedly said that he would have to consult his Cabinet colleagues before agreeing to the selection of Kenya as the site of any conference. This gave him an emergency brake of his own.
Looking at the last draft of the communique as he sent it to Reuters, the Australian Prime Minister said to Brian Mulrooney, his Canadian colleague, "It's rather small and leaky but its the best Ark we've got to survive the apocalypse."487Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGB7voEjJeT
