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Addis Ababa — African leaders this week came close to demanding that President Donald Trump publicly apologise for his vulgar remark about the continent “that defies all forms of diplomatic etiquette”, according to a draft declaration obtained.

The draft, created during an African Union summit on Sunday and Monday, says heads of state and government are “deeply appalled” by Trump’s reported comparison of African countries to a dirty toilet.

It warns that the strategic partnership between Africa and the US is at risk because of Trump’s “racist and xenophobic behaviour”.

The African leaders appear to have changed their mind on issuing the draft declaration because of a Trump letter to them last week pledging his “deep respect” and saying Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would make an “extended visit” to the continent in March, his first in that role. The letter emerged after Trump met with Rwanda’s president and new African Union chairman Paul Kagame at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week.

Many African leaders had been outraged by Trump’s comment last month, after nearly a year of little attention by his administration to the world’s second most populous continent. Concerns have been widespread over proposed deep cuts to US foreign aid and a shift from humanitarian assistance to counterterrorism.

Trump has said he didn’t use the vulgar language, while others present say he did.

Ahead of the summit, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, declared that “Africa cannot keep quiet” about Trump’s “shocking” remarks. But by Monday he had toned down his stance, telling reporters only that African leaders had received a “letter of correspondence” from Trump and “we’ve taken due note of it.”

The draft declaration, however, shows how the 55-nation continental body came close to speaking out.

It says African leaders were “dismayed and shocked by the increasingly consistent trend from the Trump administration to denigrate people of African descent and other people of colour thereby promoting racism, xenophobia and bigotry.”

It calls on the US to retract Trump’s remark and demands that he officially and publicly apologise to all Africans and people of African descent
Kagame, the new AU chair, indicated Monday that Africa and the Trump administration will have to find a way to get along.

“I’ve met the president of the United States, but the president of the United States is Trump,” Kagame told reporters. “When the United States decides to give us Trump as their president, we will deal with that president.”

l In a remarkably public clash of wills with the White House, the FBI declared on Wednesday it has “grave concerns” about the accuracy of a classified memo on the Russia election investigation that Trump wants released.

The FBI’s short and sharp statement, its first on the issue, laid bare a Trump administration conflict that had previously played out mostly behind closed doors in meetings between top Justice Department and White House officials.

“As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,” the FBI said.

Further complicating the memo’s release, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee said late on Wednesday that his committee’s vote to release the memo was now invalid because it was “secretly altered” by Republicans who wrote it.

California Rep. Adam Schiff said in a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairperson Devin Nunes that committee Democrats had discovered changes that were made after the panel voted on Monday to send it to Trump for review.

“The White House has therefore been reviewing a document since Monday night that the committee never approved for public release,” Schiff said in the letter.

Schiff did not detail the changes, and a spokesperson for Nunes did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump has five days from the vote to review the document, and if he doesn’t object then Congress can release it.

Schiff called for Nunes to withdraw the memo from the White House and for the committee to hold a new vote next Monday.

The memo is part of an effort to reveal what Republicans say are surveillance abuses by the FBI and the Justice Department in the early stages of the investigation into potential ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.

The FBI’s stance on the memo escalates the dispute and means Trump would be openly defying his hand-picked FBI director by continuing to push for its disclosure.

It also suggests a clear willingness by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who in the early stretch of his tenure has been notably low-key, to challenge a president who just months ago fired his predecessor, James Comey.

The FBI statement came the day after Trump was overheard telling a congressman that he “100 percent” supported release of the four-page memo. — AFP