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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I beg to move the following Motion:- (i) THAT, this House adopts the Report of the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations on the Study Visit to the Republic of Djibouti from 6th to 8th September, 2005, laid on the Table of the House on Wednesday, 26th April, 2006. (ii) THAT, this House adopts the Report of the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations on the Study Visit to the Republic of Congo (DRC) from 15th to 18th September, 2005, laid on the Table of the House on Wednesday, 26th April, 2006. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, these are two very short reports because the broad picture has already been represented by the previous Motion. The previous Motion talked about the entire Africa. I support that Motion very strongly. I reserved my comments because I was going to address this Motion. I am very conversant with this issues because my line of training is international relations. I would have really liked to support my friend by contributing to the Motion, but I did so in that spirit. June 14, 2006 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1393 Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, this report is very short indeed. I hope hon. Members will adopt it before the House rises because from tomorrow it will be very difficult to have a simple Motion like this one get an opportunity to go through. Since everything has been put down and explained, I would like to go through this report, starting from the introduction, which is very clear. Our mandate has been well explained on page one. The Ministries that we deal with are also explained on the same page on the report on Djibouti. The membership is also fully elaborated. I am sure hon. Members have had an opportunity to look at this report. This is a simple and straightforward matter. On the background of the visit to Djibouti, I would like to laud the Chair for ably heading this delegation. I want to thank the Chair from the Floor of the House for a well done job. As your Chairman, I was very satisfied with you for heading this delegation. You also had very good support from all hon. Members of the delegation. That is why the report is very clear. The purpose of the visit to Djibouti was as a result of the meeting we held in Kigali, Rwanda. We held the first meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Forum, which is a Kenyan baby. The Kenyan Parliament, through the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations, decided to form an organisation in the name of the Great Lakes and the Horn of Africa Region. We formed a forum where only hon. Members of Parliament will have an opportunity to dialogue among themselves, to discuss issues affecting regional relations and also conflicts in the region. Some of the countries which did not turn up for our meeting in Rwanda included the DRC, Djibouti and also Ethiopia. The meeting in Kigali decided that we start a new mission to visit and explain to the DRC, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea the purpose of the forum. That was a resolution that was decided on by the Kigali meeting. That went on very well and that is what is partly explained here in this document. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the Committee was hosted by the countries that we visited. These countries understood this matter very clearly and they gave very strong support on the idea of hon. Members of Parliament propagating that forum which will be used as parliamentary diplomacy. As it is now, regional diplomacy is left to the Ministries in respective countries. However, we decided, as hon. Members of Parliament, to form this type of forum where we shall complement the Ministries in the region in terms of bringing them together. We have had the experience that when hon. Members of Parliament are talking to each other, they become frank because they are not restrained by diplomatic etiquette. Most of the time the Minister for Foreign Affairs spends a lot of time talking about things without clearly addressing them. This has also happened during the Heads of States meetings. We have a problem of trying to please each other. However, when hon. Members of Parliament meet, it is our experience that they are very open to each other, just like we are open to each other here. We are only divided by artificial boundaries, which were left by the colonial governments. Those boundaries divided our nations. For example, you will find a majority of Luhyas are in Uganda, while some of them are in Kenya. The same case applies to the Maasai. So, we decided that the only way to get somewhere was to get the Maasai, through parliamentary diplomacy of Tanzanian Members of Parliament and also hon. Members of Kenya, to have political dialogue where they can evenly thrash out their problems. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I hope that you have looked at these reports, and that you have also listened to the report; I think this parliamentary forum is our baby. We want to thank the Government, through Parliament and the Speaker of the National Assembly, because they have supported this mission and ideas. That is very welcome. The next meeting is expected to be held in Sudan at the end of July, 2006. We think that this kind of parliamentary diplomacy and the forum will be supported all the time. Similarly, Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, we also visited Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and we explained to the hon. Members there, who are counterparts, and 1394 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES June 14, 2006 who were not able to come to the Kigali meeting because of logistical reasons. They also supported the move. In the same token, I also went to Ethiopia where I had a meeting with the Speaker of the Ethiopian Parliament. He strongly supported this position. There are quite a number of things that these Members of Parliament learnt from us, for example, the Parliamentary Service Commission (PSC). Most Members of Parliament there wanted to know how it had come about and how it is operated. We all benefited from each other. We exchanged notes with them and that way, we got closer. I remember the first time we went to Tanzania, we did not agree very well because they thought that Kenyans were just a bunch of proud men and women who do not appreciate the kind of business they do with others. We also encountered the same scenario in Uganda. They are our biggest business partner. We are quite happy that the Government of Kenya has appointed a very able ambassador to replace the one who was there previously. The philosophy of the Departmental Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations is to make sure that we get good ambassadors to the countries we do business with us, or where our trade is enormous. For example, previously, during the Cold War, the best ambassador was expected to be in places like New York, London, and so forth. But now, through our Committee, they have accepted our proposal that we need to post ambassadors to countries we trade with. I want to thank the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for that. We also need to get the best out of that arrangement because the war today is not of military but economic nature. I would also like to call it \"economic diplomacy\". Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, I know that my friends would like to contribute to this Motion, and I urge Parliament to consider that we will not have any other chance once the Budget debate starts after tomorrow. Therefore, I would like to give my colleagues this opportunity so that by the time the House rises, we will have finished debating these reports. It is now my humble duty to present and commend this report to the House. With these few remarks, I beg to move."
}