ZIMBABWE
    My years in the Commonwealth Secretariat were really marvellous years because they were years - on the political side - that were dominated by the whole issue of Rhodesia which led to the freedom of Zimbabwe, and by the ending of apartheid in South Africa; and of course the release of Mandela … I was at the heart and centre of all those developments. That was a tremendous privilege.

    I was also lucky … to have had the opportunity to be an opponent of Margaret Thatcher. I say lucky because you were drawn directly into a confrontationalist situation. And quite often that brings out the best in everybody. She was a conviction politician. She really did not believe in what we were trying to do in the Commonwealth. It was my job to mobilize the Commonwealth; to turn it around. I am glad to say in retrospect that the whole thing was a success story.

    I was very much involved in the birth of Zimbabwe. What we see happening now in Zimbabwe derives in one very important respect from what happened in those early years.

    I had the opportunity to be on an interview not so long ago on British television with Tim Sebastian on Zimbabwe … Hardtalk …

    That was an opportunity to explain. The struggle for freedom in Zimbabwe was about land. It was about political freedom and so on. But it was essentially about land.

    Cecil Rhodes and what the British describes as his pioneers had entered greater Rhodesia, given it his name, and stolen the land of the Shauna people who had been farming the land of what became Rhodesia for centuries. At the time of the struggle for independence, 75% of the fertile land of Rhodesia was in the hands of 3% of the population, being the white population. And so, for people like Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, that was what the struggle was about. It was about equitable re-distribution of the land.

    To me, as a West Indian, they were remarkably conciliatory and willing to recognize the white community as a permanent feature of Rhodesian life; that they were and would be Zimbabweans.

    But they were very insistent, and understandably so, that there had to be land re-distribution; there had to be a fair sharing of the pie. And at the Lancaster House conference, that became the breaking point: because the British insisted on some fundamental rights provisions which proceeded on the basis that the land was properly in the ownership of that 3%. And if it was to be shared out, the government would have to pay, and I remember the phrase clearly, "prompt and adequate compensation."

    At that point Mugabe and Nkomo left the meeting. They said, "We are going back home … Where are we going to find this money to pay? Are we going to go back and tell the people that we cannot deliver on this? No … We go back to the bush and continue the struggle."

    I became the interlocutor … I intermediated their continued presence in Lancaster House. And I did that on the basis of trying to develop machinery through which they would be able to meet the requirement of "prompt and adequate compensation." And I did that with the help of a very wise American ambassador, Kinmon Brewster who had been president of Yale, a Carter man, then in London; and ultimately with Lord Clarendon … on the basis that they would establish as part of the constitutional settlement an agricultural development fund to which United States and Britain would be first major contributors. Hope was many other countries as well.

    That would defray the costs, in effect, of the payment of compensation and permit land re-distribution to follow in the wake of independence. That is how Lancaster House ended.

    On that Tim Sebastian programme I actually read the text of the statement that Nkomo made when he went back to the conference saying, "We have come back on the basis of the assurances we have received in relation to this matter."

    So there is no question about that. Of course the promises were never fulfilled.

    Mugabe, I think to this day perhaps unwisely, agreed to a ten-year moratorium on land re-distribution. So it never became an immediate issue. He took on the tremendous political burden of persuading his people that "although we are free, although the struggle is over, we are independent; we don't have the money. Let us put it on ice for ten years."

    TEN YEARS. Of course in those ten years all kinds of things went wrong. All kinds of political attitudes developed. Britain and America just simply reneged on the promise to provide the money.

    Moreau: So this is the root of the problem that is now being experienced in Zimbabwe?

     ABSOLUTELY.

    Moreau: So given your explanation he is not all evil at all?

    He is not all evil at all; not by a long way. There is much that he has done that I find an aberration; I find not consistent with the Robert Mugabe I knew. But on this fundamental issue, I understand.

    What has happened after those ten years is: people have said, "Enough is enough. Are we going to be confined to the periphery of the economy for ever?" And, notice who they were. They are the war veterans. They are the people who fought for independence.

    I would have preferred to see Mugabe go about it a different way. But on the fundamental issue of where justice lies: it lies with the people of Zimbabwe.

REGIONAL NEGOTIATING MACHINERY
    That was a little vignette that I cherish. I was in London in 1997. I was very conscious of what was going on at the international economic level; because I had lived with a lot of this through the Commonwealth Secretariat days. The CARICOM heads met in Antigua in their normal meeting and talked about it. And from Antigua and from the meeting itself they telephoned me and said the Heads of Government wanted to invite me to be the region's chief negotiator in all three areas of negotiations that were coming together, and that their concept was to establish Regional Negotiating Machinery which became known familiarly as the RNM, and that their hope is that I would be the chief negotiator.

    It was very much out of the blue. But again, as so much else in my life, it was an invitation you could not refuse. Here was the Caribbean faced with negotiations in Europe with the European Union; negotiations which I had started way back in 1973/74 as Foreign Minister, leading to the first Lomé. Now we were passed the fourth Lomé, we were 25 years down the road. We were dealing with a European Union that was strong, transformed; and that could mean everything to Caribbean exports.

    Then there were to be negotiations with the Americas, because the Caribbean had signed up with Clinton in 1996, to negotiate free trade area of the Americas and to do it by 2005. And of course since those years the World Trade Organization had come on the scene. The World Trade Organization was to transform the lives of Caribbean people; transform the lives of people here in Dominica.

    And we had to negotiate the nature of the relationship of Caribbean countries with the world economy for the long future. All three of these negotiations had come together. I said yes, I would. I invited them to agree that Sir Alister McIntyre should join me; and he did. Together we really got the RNM off the ground, with a very small staff. We never had more than 6 or 7 professionals working with us. We steered the RNM for the first 5 years, giving it, I like to think, a good start; doing the basic strategic work; and laying down the parameters of the negotiations.

    That was important … Because before we got into any technical matters, and there were many technical matters, we had to understand how we were negotiating. Were we negotiating as 14 Caribbean countries? Were we negotiating as one Caribbean country? And of course we had to be negotiating as one. So that had to be clearly established.

    But negotiating as one means that you are negotiating from a single hymn sheet. You are negotiating on the basis of a single brief. And that had to be articulated and developed. And that became the foundation stone of the negotiations.

    But to say a single hymn sheet is only part of the story. What hymn sheet? How do we accommodate in the single brief the varied interests of the 14 member counties? Because the interest of the OECS countries are not the interest of Trinidad, are not the interest of Jamaica … maybe more like the interest of Guyana but certainly different. So while everybody was small and poor in relative terms, some were poorer and smaller than others. And differential treatment which had to be the mantra of the region had to be especially differential in relation to the OECS.

    So getting those ground rules agreed, respected and fulfilled and implemented, really was the first thing that we had to do in the RNM. And of course we were no sooner started than bananas came down upon us. Bananas which I regard as one of the great inequities of the world trading system, and of our relation with the United States; and something of a symbol of what is wrong with the WTO.

    The WTO is an attempt to establish the rule of law, a system of rules for world trade. And as in a society, so in the world society the poor and the weak need the protection of law. Without law, without rules, it is power that will prevail. So we need those rules. And that is what the WTO is designed to do.

    What has not happened is that the rules take account of the needs of the smallest. In fact the WTO has been distorted, it has taken account of the needs and the interests of the largest. Therefore part of our initial task in the WTO is changing the rules, changing the vision, … the outlook … the structure … which is why we got involved in Seattle.

    I was on the streets in Seattle. That was the people of the world attempting to say "It can't be like this. Decisions can't be made in little green rooms on issues that affect us and we are excluded. And a process began at Seattle is still continuing. We have to fight for the soul of the WTO. I think we will win.

    We have to be very careful in the Caribbean, because we are exposed so much to Western media influences. We are getting our radio and television from America. We are getting the same thing from Britain and Europe. Which is why your programmes…. this station … others like it in the Caribbean are so terribly, terribly important. If we listen to all that stuff we would say these are terrorists, anarchists, they are breaking down the place, they are indulging in violence, when the truth of the matter was that was the only way in which we could have stopped the steam-roller of the WTO. And the steam-roller that of course was being driven by Europe and America. And being driven over us. So we had to get out. And we did.

    Moreau: Do you think we will be successful in getting the rules changed? … Are you hopeful?

    To say I'm hopeful is putting it a little higher than is justified. To say I think it's possible is true. I think we have no option but to persist. The struggle continues. We have to go into this with a spirit of struggle.

    We have to go there not as good boys playing the game, because it is not our game. We did not design the rules. We will play the game by their rules. We have to go in on the basis that we are citizens of the world. This is a world organization. Our needs are different and special. They have to be met. They can only be met if the rules are changed. And there are enough of us to change it.

    So I think the attitude with which we enter these negotiations is terribly important …

    I am more hopeful than less hopeful because I think we have to develop and are developing the strategic alliances that are essential. First of all an alliance among ourselves, the solidarity of the Caribbean. Secondly, particularly in relation to Europe, our solidarity in the ACP; with Africa and the Pacific.

    We are very close to Africa. I remember the negotiations in 1973/74 with the first Lomé. We had played so important a part … I was leading the CARIFTA delegation. P.J. Patterson was leading the negotiations on sugar. We worked to develop the ACP. The ACP was signed (the Georgetown Agreement) in 1973 in Georgetown in Guyana, bringing together the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries; and forging a unity that was then in 1973/74 stronger than the unity of the European Union which was just nine still very fragmented countries.

    Look how they have consolidated their unity and look how we are still scratching around….

    We must rebuild and strengthen that linkage with Africa. So that Europe when it is dealing with the Caribbean must know that it is dealing with Africa too. In that first Lomé Convention the agreement nearly foundered. There were nine items that were identified as the critical things for the last session. Eight of them were settled relatively easily. One was outstanding. By then the settlement was good for Africa …

    Moreau: What was that one?

    That one was rum. And it was of interest only to the Caribbean. Africa could have taken the agreement and walked away. It went into the meeting and said to the Europeans, "We will not sign this agreement unless you settle with the Caribbean on rum."

    That is solidarity. But that solidarity has to be earned … Africa saw in us an ally of value. It was fraternity. It was brotherhood. It was the reality of solidarity. We tend to forget that. We tend to think we are in the Western Hemisphere. We are near to the Americas. If we are good to the Americas all will go well … Our African brothers need us and we need them.

    Our African brothers need us and we need them. We have to understand that at the level of the man in the street, at the level of our ambassadors … who must not just confine themselves with fraternizing with Europe and America, but consolidate those links with Africa.

    I think things are happening even in Latin America with Chavez in Venezuela; with Lula now in Brazil; Lula in particular.

    In Asia we must consolidate with a man like Mahathir who could speak out at the World Economic Forum, saying the things I'm saying now - that the arrangements for the world economy are inequitable and have to be changed.

    When the voices of the Caribbean and Africa and Latin America and Asia are added together, they have to carry weight. If we consolidate that … and I hope the meeting that is forthcoming of the non-aligned movement … that has to be revamped … can revive something of that solidarity … we have to change the world as well. It mustn't be changed only on the basis of 9/11.