Press Commnets made by South African Deputy Foreign Minister Sue van Der Merwe and Polish Counterpart Under-Secretary of State Witold Waszczykowski Union Buildings, Pretoria Monday 8 October 2007

Deputy Minister Sue van der Merwe

Welcome remarks

My counterpart from Poland and I have today had discussions around our bilateral relationship as well as matters relating to our multilateral interactions.

We have had extremely fruitful talks today focusing on these areas. South Africa and Poland have very deep bilateral relations with a number of agreements in place and we have a very strong political relationship as well as an impressively growing trade relationship between our two countries. South African companies are represented in Poland and vice-versa.

Today, we discussed a number of issue including becoming involved in agricultural co-operation and other areas. To this end, we are evaluating some of the agreements in place with a view to improving on the efficiency and effectiveness thereof.

We also discussed high level visits including Ministerial and senior government officials visiting each others country’s to deepen our relations and in addition to this, we also believe that we should continue these annual consultations in order to strengthen the relationship between the two countries.

On the multilateral side: we discussed the Africa – European Union Summit in Lisbon later this year and had very fruitful discussions in that regard.

Under-Secretary of State Witold Waszczykowski

That was a very thorough briefing.

I would like to say, thank you very much, Madame Minister for inviting us to your beautiful country. As you mentioned, we are trying to consult with you as frequently as possible.

We share a number of points on the international agenda. In this regard, one of the major issues we addressed was the relationship between the European Union and Africa. South Africa is one of the most frequently visited and consulted with countries in Africa because we think that our neighbouring continents must co-operation to resolve some of their challenges.

As Madame Minister has mentioned, we have also covered an extensive bilateral agenda. Let me remind you that a number of years South Africa was an important settlement country relating to the migration following the second World War. Thousands of people emigrated to South Africa following this war, and during the communist era.

We were never a colonial power. Poland never participated in the split and/or division of any continent.

We have a successful transformation of the country from the communist time to a liberal market and democratic country. We have many things to offer, many things to exchange including the sharing of experiences of transformation.

Regretfully there was not enough time to discuss further hence we have decided to meet as frequently as possible to enhance co-operation.

There are a number of other areas I would like to point out: both our countries in the next few years will have similar targets in mind, viz. we are going to develop our countries further and we are going to host important events in our countries. South Africa will host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup and Poland together with Ukraine will host, two years later, the European Football Championships. This was also an important issue to discuss.

Questions and answers

Question Deputy Minister van der Merwe, on the multilateral side, you said you discussed the Africa – European Union Summit. Could you give us some information regarding your discussions?

Answer (Deputy Minister van der Merwe) Both the Polish and South African governments believe this is a very important meeting due to take place. You will all be aware this meeting has not taken place for seven years. We think that there are many matters to discuss between the two continents and this is a very opportune time to begin to reconvene these meetings so that the respective continents can engage on many matters of mutual importance.

You will know that on South Africa’s side, Europe is our biggest trading partner and it is very important that we begin to engage on that level between the European Union and the African Union.

(Deputy Minister Waszczykowski) Europe is a collection of countries who have transformed themselves into a “donor club” because we understand that it is not enough to have wealth and a well developed situation only in Europe. If there is problem of poverty and underdevelopment around you, we cannot create borders around a prosperous Europe. We are ready to participate in a programme of assisting other countries on other continents. Although we still have some unsolved challenges in Europe – the Balkans, etc – we still feel there are problems in adjacent areas and adjacent continents of which Africa is one. So we were just discussing the ways in which we could use of resources, knowledge and experiences – especially experiences – in Poland I have talked about our successful transformation. Maybe we cannot add lots of money but we can provide you with lots of experience because Poland is proof of this successful transformation. These were some of the issues we discussed in this regard.

Question Deputy Minister Waszczykowski, there are frictions between your country and the European Union on the European Treaty. I wanted to know if you would compare this to the stand South Africa takes in terms of the transformation of the United Nations? What are you going to do regarding the treaty?

Answer (Minister Waszczykowski) If there is a comparison, it is a distant one. These two issues are separate. I wouldn’t say we have friction in the European Union. There is normal discussion and the processes of negotiation. Poland decided to accept the new constitution because during the last Summit in Brussels in June this year, all European countries decided to prolong the mechanism of voting on this Treaty for at least the next 10 years. We are happy with this and we accepted this solution. I understand there will be additional mechanisms which is a complicated story. I don’t think there is friction but rather open discussion amongst a family of like-minded countries and we are on the way to finding consensus.

In terms of the Security Council, this is different problem and a more difficult one. The UN Charter was created after World War II more than 60 years ago and definitely requires modification of it and the UN institutions. There is no doubt about this. But, in case of the European Union, there are 27 countries, there are close to 200 countries in the United Nations from a number of continents. Each continent is supposed to select a representative.

We are not going to interfere with this process. It is up to Africa to decide which country it will elect from the Continent.

Poland and the rest of the European Union will not block the reformation of the United Nations. We are just waiting for the candidates to represent the continents. There is no veto policy from Europe.

Question Deputy Minister van der Merwe, you mentioned high-level visits. Are there any forthcoming visits at executive level? Several countries in the EU are threatening to boycott the EU-Africa Summit if it is attended by President Mugabe. Others have said they will attend nonetheless because it is overdue. What is Poland’s position?

Answer (Deputy Minister van der Merwe) We have agreed in principal on the need to elevate our interaction to include more high level visits. There are no exact dates or plans at the moment. Some of you may recall that the last high level visit was from the former Deputy President in 2004. We believe it is now time to escalate that involvement to include high level visits. South Africa has a great deal of admiration for the way in which Poland has transformed itself and we think this dialogue needs to be escalated.

(Deputy Minister Waszczykowski) Poland would not like to create problems by discussing who from Africa should attend this Summit. I think it will be good to have President Mugabe to attend the Summit to have frank and open discussions. Otherwise he may feel the whole world is against him. We would not like to exclude anybody from discussions.

Although the decision has not yet been taken, we would rather advocate for the attendance of President Mugabe to enable frank discussions regarding the challenges his country is experiencing.

Issued by Department of Foreign Affairs

Private Bag X152
Pretoria
0001

8 October 2007