Remember Diego Garcia The soft tongue...
In Helsinki, while discussin the trade off between lowering inflation and creating employment, he criticised the "Washington Consensus" for its "singleminded focus on inflation" and that it "typically downplays stabilising output and unemployment"
He argued: "In 1995 more than half the countries in the developing world had inflation rates of less than 15 percent a year. For these 71 countries controlling inflation should not be an overarching priority."
He repeatedly stressed the need to prioritise employment creation and suggested that prioritising inflation was only necessary in extreme cases: "Controlling inflation is probably an important component of stabilisation and reform in the 25 countries... with inflation rates of more than 40 percent a year."
In Johannesburg, he lowered the number of countries that don't need to prioritise inflation to only those with an inflation rate below 8%.
With regard to privatisation, he told us that "government should focus its attention on areas where the private sector can't operate". . He stressed the role of the private sector in infrastructure and service delivery and repeatedly referred
Garcia makes the newspapers outside Mauritius, from which it was separated in 1965.
United Nations Resolutions occasionally condemn Britain for illegally occupying the Islands. The Non-Aligned Movement and Organisation for African Unity pass resolutions. Questions are occasionally asked in the British Parliament, or the US Senate-Senator Edward Kennedy expressed his horror at the "depopulation" of the Islands when the Mauritians living there were forcibly removed to make way for the base.
Diego Garcia was almost in the news during the Gulf war, when it is the base from which the B-52s took off to bomb Iraq. It still is. The US missiles launched against both Sudan and Afghanistan last year, in the wake of the Nairobi and DarEs-Salaam bombs, were launched from vessels based at Diego Garcia.
When US President Clinton protested about Indian nuclear tests, his Indian counterpart, Prime Minister Atal B. Vajpayee, remarked that the US stocks its weapons on Diego Garcia-ready for use anywhere in the region, and a direct cause of nuclear
When all the nations of Africa, and the five nuclear powers signed the Pelindaba Treaty for a Nuclear-ArmsFree Africa, the UK and USA refused to sign until "dotted lines" were put around Diego Garcia.
As the United States intensifies its economic and political domination of Africa, particularly through the Africa Growth and Opportunities Bill presently before Congress, it will be looking for any excuse to maintaining its military presence on Diego Garcia.
Mauritian reporter Henri Marimootoo has analysed a mass of material recently declassified under Britain's 30-yearsecrecy-rule had been passed. These documents reveal the 1964 Anglo-American survey, the United States insistence on getting "the whole Chagos Archipelago" , and revealed the "price £3 million "compensation" and a higher quota of Mauritian sugar allowed into the
Activists in the USA are pressing their government to re-open the Chagos
International Viewpoint #310 April 1999 23