British PM to Skip Visit to Sudan, Rwanda As Media Crisis Worsen Back Home

James Ratemo and Agencies

18 July 2011

Nairobi — British Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to Africa has been curtailed to two days to allow him deal with the inquiry into the media phone hacking scandal.

His ides, who had at one point considered cancelling the trip altogether at the height of the phone-hacking crisis last week, instead decided to cut it back from four days to two.

Cameron will now just visit South Africa and Nigeria on Tuesday.

Plans to visit Rwanda and Sudan have been effectively scrapped.

Cameron will meet Nigeria’s newly elected president Goodluck Jonathan who has taken personal charge of improving power supplies in Africa’s largest oil producing country which has little refining capacity.

Already Britain’s Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates has resigned as the phone-hacking scandal fall-out continues.

Yates is the one who checked the credentials of Neil Wallis before the Met employed the ex-News of the World executive, arrested last week over hacking allegations.

Mr Yates indicated his intention to resign to the chairman of the Met Police Authority, which was accepted.

Mr Yates’s decison to quit comes after Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson resigned on Sunday.

The resignation of Sir Paul, the most senior policeman in Britain, came after he faced criticism for the recruitment of Mr Wallis as a PR consultant.

Mr Wallis, a former Now deputy editor, was arrested and released on bail on Thursday on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.

Mr Yates’s resignation came after he was informed he would be suspended pending an inquiry into his relationship with Mr Wallis.

Mr Yates had been confronted with new information about the friendship between the two men, sources told BBC political editor Nick Robinson.

Cameron will catch an early flight home to finalise the terms and membership of Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into the media.

In his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as prime minister, Cameron will fly into South Africa with a message that an African free trade area could increase GDP across the continent by more than it currently receives in aid.

But Cameron’s free trade message is likely to be overshadowed by events back home following the arrest of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, who entertained the prime minister at her Oxfordshire home over the Christmas period.

The prime minister will fly home late on Tuesday to allow him finalise the arrangements for Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry in four areas.

The first area will look at the terms of reference for the two elements of the inquiry – the first one focusing on media regulation and the second, presided over by Leveson, that will examine the alleged wrong doing and relations between the police and the media.

The second part will not begin its work until after the criminal investigation.

The remaining three areas are the membership of the panel, which will examine media regulation over the next 12 months; the start date for Lord Leveson, and the size and location of the secretariat that will assist Leveson.

A Cameron’s aide said: “Of course events have intervened to curtail the trip to Africa. We really need to get the arrangements for the inquiry done and dusted by the end of this week because civil servants head off on their holidays by the end of July. But there were other good reasons to visit Africa for slightly less time. Just look at the state of the eurozone.”

Cameron will try to use his visit to the two largest economies in sub-Saharan Africa to highlight the importance of creating a free trade area in Africa. Accompanied by a 25-strong business delegation including the Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond, he will say that such an area could boost GDP by $62bn (£38.4bn) a year – $20bn more than the world gives sub-Saharan Africa in aid every year.

Additional reporting from BBC, The Guardian

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