A demonstrator shows a poster during a protest against Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe during the EU-Africa summit in Lisbon, yesterday. European and African leaders will seek to forge a fresh partnership to tackle issues like trade, immigration and peacekeeping this week when they hold their first summit in seven years. - Reuters

LISBON (Reuters):

The African Union's top official said yesterday that the EU's strategy of pressing individual African regions and states to sign new trade deals was divisive and would hurt the continent's rural poor and its industry.

In a speech at the opening of a summit of European and African leaders in Lisbon, the chairman of the AU Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare, attacked the EU's forceful campaign to clinch new trade and development deals with former colonies.

Most governments on the world's poorest continent have resisted EU pressure to sign new economic partnership agreements (EPA) by December 31, when a World Trade Organisation waiver allowing preferential treatment for developing countries' exports expires.

But EU trade officials have persuaded some African regional sub-groups and individual countries to sign initial interim trade deals, and talks have started with large regional groups, with the EU saying it wants to promote regional integration.

Some developing countries and antipoverty campaigners accuse Brussels of arm-twisting poor states into agreements that could open up weak economies to destructive competition.

Konare said that for the African Union, "Africa is one and indivisible" and that European efforts to negotiate with separate regions and states harked back to the past when colonial powers carved up the continent between them.

No divide and conquer

"We must avoid playing certain African regions against each other, or playing the countries of the same region against each other," he told more than 70 European and African heads of state in Lisbon.

"Otherwise, it will no doubt be possible to push through a victory of sorts, but it will be a Pyrrhic victory, based on divisions at a tremendous cost to the rural African population and to African industry," he added.

Brussels has initialled - prior to formally signing - interim trade agreements with the East Africa Community trading bloc, some Indian Ocean African states, several countries in southern Africa and Cte d'Ivoire in West Africa.

EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso said EU officials were continuing talks with individual African states during the Lisbon summit. These are believed to include Ghana and Cameroon.

But Africa's major economic powerhouses, South Africa and Nigeria, have been holding out against signing EPAs.

EU Aid and Development Commissioner Louis Michel denied Europe's aim was to divide Africa. He told reporters EU trade negotiators were trying to help states that would be hardest hit by tariffs after the end of the year if no deal is in place.

But Konare insisted speeding up the trade negotiations would bring no benefit to Africa and called for a new strategic partnership in which both continents would gain.

"It is time to bury definitively the colonial pact based on slavery and trading posts. We can no longer be merely exporters of raw materials, we can no longer accept being solely an import market for finished products," he said.

Konare noted that, as the EU continued to press Africa to sign EPAs, the continent was increasingly engaging with other international partners, such as China, India and Latin America.