World Bank to extend emergency credit

The World Bank was expected to approve a US $12.8 million emergency credit facility to the Comoros on Monday, news reports said. The Indian Ocean archipelago has experienced prolonged economic isolation due to ongoing separatist turmoil. Comoran leader Azali Assoumani’s press service was quoted as saying that the money would be spent on political reconciliation efforts in the Islamic republic’s islands - Anjouan, Grande Comore and Moheli. Meanwhile, reports said on Monday that efforts to finalise a new constitution for the Comoros islands had collapsed at the weekend.

A diplomat attending the meeting was quoted as saying that a tripartite commission to examine a draft text of a new constitution had ended in “total failure”. “There is a deadlock. We have not made any progress at all. The delegations are rooted to their positions,” he said. The talks were meant to reach agreement over a reconciliation accord signed in February to solve a crisis sparked in 1997, when Anjouan, one of the islands making up the Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros, unilaterally declared independence.

Reports said delegations from Anjouan and Moheli favoured a “Union of the States of Comoro” and not a “Union of the Islands of Comoro”, and that they also backed the idea of a rotating collegial presidency comprising the heads of the three constituent island states. These delegations face opposition from the country’s main island, Grande Comore. The only breakthrough, reports added, came with an agreement to refer to “the Comoran people” instead of the “Comoran populations”.