US reopens embassy in despotic oil-rich state

The United States officially reopened its diplomatic mission in the small oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea on Thursday, eight years after closing its diplomatic mission at a time when it was just a poor country notorious for human rights abuse. Washington's decision to close the embassy in 1995 - the same year that oil was discovered offshore - was officially attributed to budgetry constraints. But it was widely seen as a protest against horrendous human rights abuses by the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema. When the State Department announced last year that the embassy in the island capital of Malabo would be reopened, diplomats and human rights activists said its rethink had been prompted by the fact that US companies now control the former Spanish colony's rapidly rising oil and gas production. This was confirmed by State Department spokesman Andrew Mitchell as he announced the embassy's reopening on Thursday. Mitchell told IRIN by telephone from Washington: "There are currently 3,000 US citizens working in Equatorial Guinea and the US needs to provide services to them." Another State Department official said the new embassy would be a "small" mission, headed by James Panos as charge d'affaires. George Staples, the US ambassador to Cameroon, who is based in Yaounde, would retain his dual accreditation to Equatorial Guinea, she added. Equatorial Guinea has been ruled by one family since independence from Spain in 1968 and has a dreadful record of human rights abuse, corruption and misrule. The first president, Francisco Macias Nguema, ruled as a dictator until 1979 when he was toppled in a coup d’etat by his nephew, who continues to hold power. “The opening (of the embassy) sends a wrong signal in terms of democracy and human rights”, Sarah Wykes, an oil expert at the London-based watchdog Global Witness, told IRIN by telephone from London. One of Equatorial Guinea's many exiled opposition leaders also expressed reservations about the move. “We don’t see the reopening with suspiscion, but the problem is democracy and human rights. Thanks to oil multinationals, the regime has become powerful”, Aquilino Nguema Ona Nchama of the Union for Democracy and Social Development told IRIN by telephone from Madrid.’ The US embassy was reopened at a time when Equatorial Guinea is emerging as sub-Saharan’s Africa third largest oil producer, after Nigeria and Angola. Three American oil multinationals, ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess and Marathon Oil, control most of the country’s 350,000 barrels per day oil output. Equatorial Guinea now has a nominal per capita income of more than $4,400 per year, but Nchama questioned why its 500,000 people were still plagued with poverty. “Where goes the money? Where goes the oil money?”, he asked. The US Department of Energy answered this question in a recent report on Equatorial Guinea. “There is strong evidence of government misappropriation of oil revenues, in particular for lavish personal expenditures,” it said. Since the discovery of offshore oil eight years ago, living standards have barely risen and power cuts and water shortages are daily ocurrences. “The failure of the government to inject oil revenues into the country’s economy, especially to fund much-needed improvements in the country’s infrastructure, has meant little improvement in the economic and social welfare of most EcuatoGuineans," the Department of Energy said. "While real per capita GDP has doubled over the las five years, there has been little positive change in social indicators”, it added As oil revenues have gone up, human rights have gone down, according to opposition parties and international human rights groups. About 20 oppposition parties now operate in exile. Most of them are based in Spain. Detention without trial, death threats, and assassinations have been used to silence the president's critics. Last year, dozens of opposition officials were sentenced to prison terms for plotting to overthrow Nguema in a trial that was denounced as flawed by human rights groups.