'OBAMA'S VISIT MOST SIGNIFICANT' (Pg 3) 18-05-09

Story: Kofi Yeboah
A RETIRED Ghanaian diplomat, Mr K. B. Asante, and a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Akwasi Osei-Adjei, have described the upcoming visit of President Barack Obama of the US to Ghana next July as America’s recognition of Ghana’s leadership role in Africa.
In separate interviews, the two statesmen urged President J. E. A. Mills and the government to take advantage of the visit to present Africa’s case to the US President with regard to fighting the scourge of poverty, hunger, disease and under-development in general.
Whereas Mr Asante called on the government to depart from the beggar mentality to a posture of confidence in dealing with its American guest, Mr Osei-Adjei stressed the need to discuss serious issues, such as how the US could assist Ghana to tackle the drug menace in the country.
“Although we will roll out the red carpet for him, we should firmly state the problems facing Africa,” Mr Asante told the Daily Graphic, adding that there was the need to even discuss controversial issues, possibly in private.
“It’s not a question of just shaking hands. We must discard the beggar mentality that is normally associated with such visits,” he added.
He said Ghana could raise the issue of the negative impact that rice importation was having on the country’s economy by politely reminding the American President of the measures he had put in place to salvage the banking sector in his country following the effects of the global financial crisis.
He asked the government to start preparing the issues it might want to discuss with the US President during the visit “because we haven’t got much time”.
Mr Asante said it should be possible for President Mills to sign a pact with President Obama to outline the way forward as far as relations between the US and Ghana, on one hand, and the US and Africa, on the other, were concerned.
Touching on the significance of the visit, the retired diplomat said naturally Mr Obama would want to strengthen US-Africa relations but noted that to have made Ghana his first visit to Africa underlined the country’s significance as a major power and influence bloc on the continent.
He said after becoming the first country south of the Sahara to gain independence, Ghana had been at the forefront of African unity “and so for the American President to come to the cradle of Africa unity is very important”.
Mr Asante said Mr Obama would not visit any country for the sake of it, pointing out that his visit to Ghana meant the country had something to contribute to world progress.
Mr Obama’s upcoming visit will be the third time a sitting American President has visited Ghana. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush visited Ghana in March 1998 and February 2008, respectively, in the twilight of the Rawlings and the Kufuor administrations.
President Obama’s visit comes at the dawn of the Mills administration and, according to Mr Asante, it was more significant than the two previous visits by American Presidents, which he described as essentially public relations enterprises.
He said the significance of President Obama’s visit lay in the fact that it was coming at a time of a serious global financial crisis.
For his part, Mr Osei-Adjei described the upcoming visit as good news because it demonstrated the fact that Ghana had come of age in world politics.
“The visit is a recognition of what we have achieved as a nation,” he noted, adding that there was the need to strengthen the gains of democracy, particularly by upholding the tenets of good governance, the rule of law and accountability.
He said he looked forward to seeing the two countries deepen their existing agreements, such as the Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) and the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA).
He said there was the need to ensure that all the promises made under those agreements were fulfilled.
On the drug menace, Mr Osei-Adjei said although Ghana was currently a transit country, there was the possibility of it becoming a consuming country and so there was the need to seek American assistance to address the problem.
He urged the government to adopt a non-partisan approach in the running and execution of the programme for Mr Obama’s visit so that all Ghanaians would benefit from it.