The 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) is prepared to assist Mozambique to fight an insurgency that has destabilised its gas-rich northern Cabo Delgado province since 2017, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday.
The South African leader, however, declined to reveal what measures SADC would take to help Maputo stop the conflict from spilling “over into our own countries.”
“You don’t want to be involved in a war situation and tell your adversary that we are coming, get ready for us. You don’t want to do that,” Ramaphosa said.
He added: “I am afraid you just have to bear with us. That’s the type of sensitive information that we’ll have to keep quiet about for now,” he said.
Ramaphosa said the recent SADC emergency Double Troika Summit held in Maputo in late May assessed Mozambique’s needs to secure the troubled province.
The insurgency has forced the suspension of activities at a US$60-billion gas project being spearheaded by French oil and gas giant Total.
It has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced nearly 300,000 others from the region since the violence started in October 2017.
The ratings agency Standard & Poor’s Global said the militant attacks in Cabo Delgado Province posed a “significant threat” to the production facilities associated with one of the biggest natural gas discoveries in the world.
The insurgents’ March attack of the coastal town of Palma left dozens killed, hundreds of others injured and thousands of people displaced as they escaped to Pemba, the regional capital of Cabo Delgado.
NM/jn/APA