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Guebuza, who attended the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, was speaking in an interview with the Chinese television station CCTV, the Mozambique News Agency (AIM) reported.
The Mozambican president denied that China had colonialist pretensions of its own in Africa.
Instead, China had proved to be a sincere friend, helping countries such as Mozambique to free themselves from foreign rule and achieve independence, Guebuza said.
When Africans fought selflessly for independence, he said, it was not so that could immediately be re-colonized or have a new Chinese boss rather than a European face.
Guebuza said those who talked of China "colonizing" Africa had no idea what real colonialism was or how they suffered from a superiority complex making them believe that "we Africans are incapable of choosing our friends".
He said he had been in personal contact with the Chinese since the 1960s and was sure that the motive for Chinese interest in Africa was a genuine solidarity and desire to help Africans to speed up their development.
He recalled that during the anti-colonial struggle, voices in the west claimed that China wished to export its own political system to Africa "but we knew that was a groundless accusation".
"What we wanted was to free ourselves from colonialism and all those who could help us were welcomed, and we saw them as true friends. Today also we are not going to be carried away by similar accusations, because what we want is to free ourselves from poverty, and once again we are ready to accept all the aid that anyone wishes to give us."
Guebuza said he had been visiting China since 1966, nine years before Mozambique's independence in 1975, and had never seen any evidence that Beijing wished to colonise Africa.
Asked about the crisis in Zimbabwe, Guebuza expressed support for the vetoes by China and Russia on the United Nations Security Council in July which prevented the imposition of wider sanctions against President Robert Mugabe and other named members of his regime.
He said he thought that these vetoes were "correct steps" that prevented radical measures to a problem which could be resolved peacefully.
The Mozambican leader expressed regret about the lack of political will to transfer technology from the rich to poor countries, saying he believed that had the political will existed, it would have been possible to defeat diseases such as AIDS by now.
On the Olympics, Guebuza said if the Olympic spirit were to prevail in the Unite d Nations, "the world would be a much better place than it is today - though we must recognise that the world has already changed much for the better in recent years". |
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