COMORO ISLANDS: OAU Urges Breakaway Islands to End Secession

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Dec 16 1997 (IPS) - The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) this week urged the isles of Anjouan and Moheli to end their secession from the Comoro Islands. The appeal followed inconclusive talks on the future of the archipelago in Addis Ababa.

A communique signed at the end of the Dec. 12-14 negotiations, brokered by the OAU, simply said that both sides would resume negotiations soon.

The failure of the talks was taken as a sign of victory by people in the two breakaway islands, who reportedly took to the streets to show the appreciation to their respective representatives for standing their ground.

“I hope they will review their positions,” Salim Ahmed Salim, the Secretary General of the OAU, told a European radio station monitored here this week.

He said Anjouan and Moheli, which are mostly volcanic and impoverished, were better off within a united Islamic Republic of the Comoros. “The islands are not viable economically to stand on their own,” he said.

The Comoros, an archipelago of four small islands (Grande- Comore — where the capital Moroni is situated — Anjouan, Moheli and Mayotte), lies between East Africa and the north-western coast of Madagascar.

Three of the four, with a combined population of some 540,000, won independence from France in 1975. The fourth, Mayotte, opted in a 1974 referendum to remain under French administration.

But in August, Anjouan and Moheli, which together account for half the federation’s population, unilaterally declared their independence from the Comoros. They charged that the 22 years since independence from France had yielded little more that poverty, civil strife and numerous coups.

Apparently attracted by a higher standard of living, elaborate social security system and regular payment of civil servants in Mayotte, they wanted to return to French rule. However, Paris rejected this, repeatedly stating that France would only back the OAU’s efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis in the Comoros.

In August, OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim warned that the secession represented a dangerous precedent for the Indian Ocean archipelago’s neighbours.

The OAU insisted on face-to-face talks between representatives of the three islands, proposing the holding of an all-party conference on their future in Addis Ababa, where the headquarters of the Panafrican body is situated.

It also agreed to send a small force of about 25 troops to Anjouan as observers, following claims by Anjouan leader Abdalla Ibrahim that President Mohamed Taki was planning to stage a second invasion of the island.

On Sep. 3. some 300 soldiers he sent to crush the secession had been beaten back by the Anjouanese separatists. Less than two months later, on Oct. 26, the island’s 150,000 inhabitants voted overwhelmingly for independence in a referendum organised by their leaders.

The OAU and the Arab League had urged Ibrahim not to hold the referendum, warning that the exercise would complicate the OAU’s mediation efforts. Salim later said that the OAU had not recognised the exercise.

Salim said this week that the Comorian federal government, whose delegation at the weekend talks was led by Education Minister Mouzawar Abdalla, was flexible and willing to accommodate the aspirations of the secessionists.

The government has offered broad autonomy for each of the three islands — Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli — and, according to Salim, it “also showed willingness to provide resources for the islands”.

He said there were hopeful signs that a solution would be found in the near future and that he was happy with the way the delegations had conducted themselves at the end of the conference.

“At first, the two delegations were not at talking terms, but towards the end of the meeting they began to talk and mixed freely,” he noted.

Salim urged the Federal government in Moroni to maintain the channel of communications open. “I have urged the government to let medicine and humanitarian aid get in,” he added.

Taki’s government cut all transport links between the breakaway isles and Grande Comore in reaction to the succession.