President Bush Welcomes
President Obasanjo
of Nigeria to the White House
THE
WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release March 29, 2006
REMARKS
BY PRESIDENT BUSH
AND PRESIDENT OBASANJO OF NIGERIA
IN PHOTO OPPORTUNITY
The Oval Office
10:30
A.M. EST
PRESIDENT BUSH: Mr. President, welcome back to the Oval Office. We
have just had a discussion that covered a lot of topics. Every time I
meet with the President he brings a fresh perspective about the politics
and the situation on the continent of Africa, and I want to thank you.
I want to thank you for your leadership.
The President and I talked about Darfur and the Sudan, and I made
it very clear to him that we're deeply concerned about the humiliation,
the rape, the murder that is taking place among the -- against the
citizens of Darfur. He agreed. And I want to thank you for your
compassion.
We talked and strategized about how to move forward, how to make it
clear to the Sudanese government that there will be a international
response in working toward a peace. We talked about a dual track, that
the rebels must come together and negotiate with the government, and at
the same time, we talked about bolstering the AU peacekeeping force with
a Blue Helmet force. And I explained my desire to have a NATO overlay,
to make sure that force is robust.
We talked about economic development. Of course, I brought up
energy to the President. He's -- and I talked about the situation in
the Nigerian Delta. He talked to me about his strategy to deal with the
energy issue.
And finally, I appreciate the decision he made regarding Charles
Taylor. In my visit last week with the President of Liberia, we talked
about Charles Taylor. The fact that Charles Taylor will be brought to
justice in a court of law will help Liberia and is a signal, Mr.
President, of your deep desire for there to be peace in your
neighborhood.
So welcome to the Oval Office. It's good to have you here, sir.
PRESIDENT OBASANJO: Thank you very much. And as usual, I want to
thank you for the warm and hardy reception that you have accorded us.
The areas that I would call the areas of concern, by the time I
arrived here last night, seemed to have been definably dealt with by
this morning, particularly the issue of Charles Taylor. And as I said
to you about a minute -- a few minutes ago, Charles Taylor should be
landing in Liberia by now, which should start putting the issue of
Charles Taylor behind us.
I appreciate the understanding of everybody and the way that the
issue has been handled. I met the press earlier today to actually give
what was our own position and how we were hoping to deal with the issue
of Charles Taylor's disappearance. And of course, I do not agree, must
disagree that we have been negligent in the way we handled the Charles
Taylor issue. If we had been negligent then Charles Taylor would have
got away. He would not have been arrested if there was negligence or
condonation on our part.
Having said that, we, of course, talked about the general situation
of peace and security in the West Africa sub-region, and how West Africa
sub-region, with Charles Taylor issue behind us, how West Africa
sub-region is gradually becoming a haven of peace. We have dealt with
Togo, we have dealt with Guinea-Bissau, we have dealt with Sierra
Leone. Hopefully, we are now dealing with Liberia. And things seem to
be going fairly well in Cote D'Ivoire. Well, of course, we are keenly
watching the situation in Guinea Conakry.
Then we looked at the rest of Africa, particularly Democratic
Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the Great Lakes,
generally. Then we talked about the issue of development, particularly
security -- supplies, security, stability, and also -- of hydrocarbons
from the Gulf of Guinea area, and how we are working hard to establish a
Gulf of Guinea commission that will also deal with the issue of
reconciling and dealing with ending misunderstanding among those in that
-- among countries that are in the Gulf of Guinea, how we can protect
and how we can monitor what happens in that area, because the
hydrocarbon we need for our own development and we need for the economic
development and progress of the world. We are moving in this regard not
only by ourselves, but also by our -- with our development partners.
Then, of course, we talked about NEPAD, which is where we work with
the G8 and -- politically and individually.
And we -- I briefed the President on what we are doing with the
Niger Delta, which is very important. And we are very grateful that the
measures we are taking, which are essentially socioeconomic measures, to
address some of the grievances, identified grievances, will resolve the
issue of the Niger Delta.
I think these are some of the points. And I think -- I want to
thank President for remaining his charming self. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, sir.
END 10:38 A.M. EST
