Kenyan minister for East African Community Amason Jeffah Kingi said that the envisaged Common Market would face severe challenges if member states continued to hold onto their sovereignty.
During the 6th round of the meeting held in Zanzibar last year, Tanzania voiced concerns about the common market protocol and requested more time to consult and report to the council of ministers at the subsequent meeting.
This appeared to rub their Kenyan and Ugandan counterparts the wrong way with the ministers from the latter two defiantly declaring that they were ready to go ahead with the move to a common market without Tanzania.
National interest would conflict with the regional interest and partner states would hurt the cause of deeper integration by hanging on too jealously to sovereignty, Mr Kingi said at the opening of the meeting of the High Level Taskforce on the negotiations on Thursday.
According to Mr Kingi, for the region to move forward, the five partner states, including Burundi and Rwanda; should avoid being more concerned about delivering locally over the short-term, in order to win election, but should focus on a larger picture of a prosperous, competitive, peaceful East African Community''.
The minister, however, said that the differences were normal since the member states have different legislations that needed time to harmonise.
From the onset, we were aware that we could not agree on all issues because the legal regimes, sizes of the economies and ideologies were different, he said.
Ugandan head of delegation to the five-day discussions Edith Kateme-Kasajja said that this was the right time to open up the markets of the partner states to more regional investments.
As a government, we are for the integration and sharing of the resources while also enabling free movement of labour and capital, she said.
But addressing the Press later, Tanzanian head of delegation Uledi Musa reaffirmed his country's commitment to the spirit of East African integration.
He said that Tanzania would never consider pulling out of EAC because of the shared interests; which are more than the differences people have been focusing on.
We have gone so far and erased a lot of suspicions that we had about each other at the beginning, said Mr Musa.
However, he reiterated that there were still some areas that have sensitive implications if they were implemented without consultations.
Private ownership
One of them is the land legislation policies in the member states. Whereas Kenya and Uganda allow private ownership of land, in Tanzania, the government owns all the land, which makes acquisition a big challenge to foreigners.
We need to review this situation and do a lot of consultation. In any case, when this materialises, Tanzanians should be given the first rights to land before citizens of other partner states, said Mr Musa.
Apart from the land issue, Tanzania held a different view on the proposal to allow citizens of the member states to use national identity cards as travel document within the region.
Already, the life of the High Level Taskforce negotiating the protocol has been extended for a further four months, to April this year, instead of the initial December 2008.
The hardline position taken by Tanzania casts a new shadow of doubt on the speedy actualisation of the regional body.
The protocol had 15 areas, but the consensus was watered down by Tanzania in the past meetings when her delegation repeatedly stated that Tanzania wanted to go slow in the integration process.
These differences, the Tanzania delegation clarified, should not act as obstacles to the commencement of the Common Market by 2010.
But even as the meeting began, the fragile situation between Kenya and Uganda, over the ownership of Migingo island on Lake Victoria, could not just go away.
Resolved quickly
Mr Kingi said that the standoff was giving a bad picture as far as the integration of the region was concerned.
The standoff, which is now running into a year, has seen Kenyan fishermen on the small island arrested and harassed by Ugandan authorities.
Mr Kingi warned that the matter was bound to derail the integration efforts unless it was resolved quickly.
Already, the Kenyan ministers of Foreign Affairs and Internal Security and their Ugandan counterparts have met to iron out the thorny issues.
Ms Kateme-Kasajja, however, denied that Kenyan fishermen were facing harassment from Uganda. – Daily Nation
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