The East African Community ministerial council has granted regional common market negotiators more time to resolve outstanding issues. The High Level Task Force (HLTF) members will continue with technical negotiations until March next year other than the December, 2008 deadline. The HLTF will hold three more talks, after that of Kigali next month, which was regarded as a wrap up meeting. According to Rwanda’s EAC Minister, Monique Mukaruliza, the next meetings will help the HLTF seek further consultations to facilitate decisions on outstanding issues. Some of the unresolved outstanding issues include accessing and acquiring of land under the right of establishment, issuing of national identity to facilitate free movement of persons, and approaches for liberalising services. These issues have been pending since the second round talks in Nairobi, Kenya in August this year. The decision to extend the deadline was reached during last week’s extraordinary meeting between the HLTF members, Multi-sectoral committee and the ministerial council in Zanzibar, Tanzania. According to Mukaruliza, the decision was based on the limited time framework characterised by postponements. “The mandated time of one year was not enough, according to the importance and the state of the protocol. Further still, a partner state requested for more time to consider the first talks report, having missed while on domestic duty,” Mukaruliza explained. Prudence Sebahizi, Rwanda’s Chief Negotiator, said the decision was also based on the HLTF request for more time to handle new issues crucial to the Common Market. Some of these include; institutional reforms, environmental matters, and social policy. Sebahizi who is also the Executive Secretary of Rwanda’s Regional Integration Committee (RIC) said that the new issues will be considered alongside those outstanding. However, reports from the meeting reveal that the Multi-sectoral forum failed to resolve the issues and were then forwarded to the ministerial council, which also failed thus proposing more time. He was optimistic that given more time, the HLTF will accomplish its duties and a report will be presented to multi-sectoral committee in March, 2009. Ends
