MOZAMBIQUE AND MALAWI CLAIM NO COOLING IN RELATIONS

The Mozambican and Malawian governments claimed on Friday that there has been “much progress” in bilateral relations in recent years, thus downplaying the signs of coolness and friction in their relations.Speaking at the end of a meeting in Maputo of the Mozambique-Malawi Joint Cooperation Commission, Malawian Deputy Foreign Minister Steven Kamwendo said that bilateral cooperation “how made a lot of headway, but there are challenges ahead of us”.He claimed that there has been “tremendous progress” in trade between the two countries, and that there have also been “some advances in transport, as in the project for the navigability of the Zambezi river”. Landlocked Malawi hopes for a new exit to the sea for its trade along the Shire and Zambezi rivers. Mozambique is also interested in the navigability of the Zambezi as a possible route for coal exports from Tete province.Kamwendo’s Mozambican counterpart, Eduardo Koloma, was also upbeat about the meeting, claiming that “very positive results” have been achieved in cooperation with Malawi.Among the challenges that Kamwendo envisaged is the establishment of a dry port in Mutarara, in Tete, on the Mozambique-Malawi border, and speeding up the Zambezi project.This friendly attitude contrasts vividly with the wild claims made last month by some Malawian businessmen that the Mozambican government was “sabotaging” the Malawian economy, echoing the allegation by Malawian Information Minister Symon Vuwa Kaunda that the fuel shortage in Zimbabwe was due to repairs on the Samora Machel bridge in Tete cityTrucks carrying fuel to Malawi from Beira have to use the bridge. But, as journalists visiting Tete could see, although the rehabilitation of the bridge slows traffic down, it does not bring it to a halt, and no truck is stuck at the bridge for days or weeks. Mozambique’s National Roads Administration and the Mozambican High Commission in Malawi both denied Kaunda’s claims. So did the Malawian Road Transport Operators Association (RTOA), whose Executive Director Shadrack Matsimbe, pointed out that the repairs on the bridge have been under way for 18 months, but the erratic fuel supply only began in August.Matsimbe added that no problem in Tete could affect imports of fuel through Nacala, in northern Mozambique, or Dar es Salaam, in Tanzania. “The fact is that we as a country are short of foreign exchange”, he saidA further ugly incident happened last year, when a Malawian police unit attacked a post of the Mozambican frontier guard in Niassa province. The diplomatic row over this forced Malawian President Bingu Wa Mutarika to cut short the visit he was making to Mozambique at the time.