{\u2018\u2019If economics are not okay, the Community will be shaky,\u2019\u2019 he said in a special address to the National Parliament in the capital Dodoma yesterday.}<\/p>\n
He added that politics can come after working with economics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want a federation built on a firm foundation which is well-planned, otherwise its survival will be dubious,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
President Kikwete was apparently reacting to recent development of meetings of Presidents of Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda on railway infrastructure, port and pipeline projects among them, distancing Tanzania and Burundi Presidents\u2014both active members of EAC\u2013 from the sessions.<\/p>\n
The Tanzanian leader reaffirmed his country\u2019s commitment to the EAC but stated would follow the gradual integration processes as stipulated in the Treaty signed in 1999 \u2013Customs Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and eventually the EA Political Federation.<\/p>\n
Tanzania, he assured, was not contemplating leaving the 14-year-old EAC and would continue to engage the other four partner states on the sober need of integrating through agreed pillars.<\/p>\n
The Community has so far created the Customs Union and the Common Market and an agreement to achieve the Monetary Union is expected to be signed later this month.<\/p>\n
He considered that Tanzania\u2019s different position on issues of land, immigration and movement of labour might not be in good taste with the Partners and possible reasons of his country\u2019s so called \u2018\u2019 sudden isolation\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2019We want a strong and progressive EAC that benefits all its citizens\u2019\u2019, Mr Kikwete stressed, underlining that his country would not wish to see the repeat of the 1977 when the old EAC collapsed mainly because of divergent political and ideological differences.<\/p>\n
Kikwete had met his counterparts from Uganda and Kenya in South Africa on the sidelines of the SADC-Great Lakes Initiative meeting early this week on the Democratic Republic of Congo crisis. However, not details have been divulged of their closed-door talks.<\/p>\n
East African News Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{\u2018\u2019If economics are not okay, the Community will be shaky,\u2019\u2019 he said in a special address to the National Parliament in the capital Dodoma yesterday.} He added that politics can come after working with economics. \u201cWe want a federation built on a firm foundation which is well-planned, otherwise its survival will be dubious,\u201d he said. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000049210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-11365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000049210,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton11365.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000049210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11365"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=11365"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=11365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}