15 Feb 2017

Minister of International Affairs and Cooperation, Dr Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi has expressed satistaction at the support she got from President Lt Gen.  Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama  in her unsuccessful bid for the chairpersonship of the AU Commission.
Addressing the media on the  outcome of the recent AU summit,  Dr Venson-Moitoi dismissed as untrue reports that blamed her loss to the unavailability of President Khama at the summit.
She said there were other candidates whose head of states were present at the summit but did not win either.
Furthermore, Dr Venson-Moitoi said the fact that the President sent a delegation to the summit was enough honour to the AU, adding he suported her during the campaign.
“I had the full endorsement of SADC and I was the only candidate with the full endorsement of a region. If anybody  did not vote for me because my President was not at the summit, I think that would  just be an excuse,” she said.
Meanwhile, as for the key outcomes of  the summit, Dr Venson-Moitoi said Morocco was given AU membership after it left the then Organisation of African Unity in 1984 in protest against the organisation’s recognition of Western Sahara as an independent country and admission of that country as a member of the organisation.
However, Botswana’s position was to remain committed to the independence of Western Sahara and would continue to work with like-minded countries to defend the sovereignty of Western Sahara, she said.
The summit also adopted the International Criminal Court (ICC)withdrawal strategy, a document that, she said  outlined a number of areas that some of the African countries were not happy with regarding the ICC Statute.
She said these included amendments that had been proposed to the Rome Statute of the ICC, reform of the UN Security Council, enhancing Africa representation in the ICC, strengthening of national legal and judicial mechanisms and ratification of the Protocol on the amendments on the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights.
The minister further said Botswana and many of the State parties to the Rome Statute maintained that there was no recognised notion of collective withdrawal from international agreements and that the decision to withdraw from any treaty was a unilateral decision by a sovereign state, and that the AU was not party to the Rome Statute, therefore could not withdraw from the ICC. ENDS