Mauritania: The new government in Mauritania has faced the EU head on over its fisheries policy, as the owners of 'Atlantic Dawn' have discovered, writes Pieter Tesch in Nouakchott.
The resolve with which the new Mauritanian government faced the might of the EU in the recent failed negotiations over a new fisheries treaty came as a shock to the EU delegation that had to leave the capital, Nouakchott, empty-handed last month.
But it should have been warned. Earlier in February, the government had told Australian Woodside Petroleum on the eve of its first offshore oilfield coming into production that it disputed the legality of amendments made a year ago to the production share contracts (PSCs).
After the new government came to power on August 3rd last year, ousting the regime of Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya in a bloodless military coup under Col Ely Ould Mohamed Vall, many western observers assumed that it would be "business as usual" in the country of 1.04 million sq km of mainly desert with barely three million people. Mauritania had experienced a series of coups since it gained independence from France in 1960.
The military Council for Justice and Democracy's condemnation of the Taya regime as corrupt was dismissed as the usual rhetoric; there was more concern about its release of Islamist opposition activists.
Former president Taya had managed to stay in power since a coup in 1984 transforming himself from a Saddam Hussein supporter during the first Iraq war to introducing a limited form of democracy in 1994 and recognising Israel. He became closely associated with the US "war on terror" in the Sahel region south of the Sahara.
The Taya regime opened its door to western business by concluding its first fisheries treaty with the EU in 1996, allowing EU fishermen to fish on everything from octopus to small pelagic species like sardine and sardinella targeted by Dutch trawlers and the controversial Irish super-trawler Atlantic Dawn.
In the same year, a small Australian oil exploration company, Hardman Resources, signed the first PSC with the Mauritanian government. It brought in subsequently the bigger Woodside company that struck commercially viable oil in the Cinguetti offshore field in 2001.
It was also the year when a new EU fisheries treaty was agreed that allowed Spanish fishermen to continue to trawl for octopus despite warnings about stock levels and competition with Mauritanian artisanal fishermen.
It appeared that the then government was happy to accept income from the extraction and export of its wealth, whether fish, ores or oil in the future, without being too concerned about having them processed at home.
This policy was initially rewarded with favourable reports from the World Bank and IMF.
More recent reports, however, slammed the Taya government for its handling of its budget and economy. When, after the coup, the new government checked the books, it realised that on average €200 million a year had gone unaccounted for - by comparison, the government earned some €84 million a year from the EU fishery treaty, according to a government spokesman.
The new government discovered 50 amendments to the original PSC with Woodside, which it said were solely in the interests of the Australian company in which Shell is a major shareholder. Tullow Oil has minority interests in some offshore blocks.
Aboubakr Ould Maroini, the director general of state-owned Société Mauritanienne des Hydrocarbures, called these amendments "a fraud".
The new oil and energy minister, Mohamed Aly Ould Sidi Mohamed, said the amendments were null and void because, although enacted by parliament on February 1st, 2005, they were only signed retrospectively by Woodside on February 12th and by the former oil minister Zeidane Ould Hmeida, on March 5th.
In January this year, Hmeida was arrested and charged with "serious crimes against the country's essential economic interests", while a judge is carrying out further investigations.
A Woodside spokesman denied that anything was wrong with the amendments and hoped for an amicable solution.
In the same spirit, the new government critically reviewed the fisheries treaty with the EU, seeking a substantial reduction in the fishing efforts of Spanish vessels targeting octopus and the exclusion of those whom they accused of repeatedly breaking the rules of the treaty, such as Atlantic Dawn.
It had the reputation that it "could not be touched", according to other foreign fishing interests in Mauritania. They added that the trawler's agent in Mauritania was a relative of the ousted president Taya.
Soon after last year's coup, Atlantic Dawn was apprehended for fishing in the coastal zone off the northern port of Nouadhibou reserved for artisanal fishermen. It was fined $250,000 and told to leave. Its owners denied that it had broken the rules and claimed they were being victimised by the new government.
The new fisheries minister, Sidi Mohamed Ould Sidina, rejects this. He stressed that Mauritania had the right to exclude "repeat offenders" despite EU pressure.
The new government's tough stand on oil and fisheries appears to be widely popular, as recent demonstrations by artisanal fishermen suggest. They also believe that the government is serious in its promise to hand over power to a democratically elected government in two years' time.
That view is apparently shared by the US. Initially concerned about the release of Islamists, the Bush administration appears to have accepted the new government's democratic credentials.
"The new government has asked to assist in the democratisation process and even suggested to shorten the transition period to 19 months instead of two years," said Anne Prow, deputy director of operations of the Washington based National Democratic Institute on her recent visit.