Military deal: Bring the supposed agreement I signed to Parliament – Hanna Tetteh

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs in the erstwhile NDC administration has challenged the Minister of Defense, Dominic Nitiwul to also present to the august house of parliament the previous Ghana-US defence deal she is supposed to have signed for scrutiny as they have done with the new deal.

This she says will make it easier for the honourable members to do a comparison between the two agreements and also help the minister substantiate his point.

In an interview with Gold Power Drive host, Hanna Tetteh said, "I think that from the statements being made by officials of the NPP government, it is clear that this a new agreement. When you are signing a new agreement, it means that any provision you are unhappy with in the previous agreement you have the ability to renegotiate them. So this business of saying that whatever it is that they are bringing to parliament is as a result of things that were done by the previous government, it is just simply trying to pass the back and not taking responsibility for what they themselves have negotiated".

"When I sign any agreement on behalf of another ministry and in this case the Ministry of Defense, it is not the case it is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that has negotiated the agreement. The implementing ministry will be the ministry that takes responsibility for negotiating the details and because it is a country to country agreement, it is the reason why it will be signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs even if the implementing ministry is a different ministry. So this is not an agreement that was negotiated by me as minister of Foreign Affairs, it was signed by me on behalf of the Government Of Ghana and in this particular instance the Ministry of Defense" she explained.

She has also suggested that to make the matter clear and for the purposes of informing the Ghanaian public, the NPP government should make public the agreement that was signed by the previous NDC administration and also explain how that agreement commits the government to continue doing certain things today because she doesn’t believe that is the case.

"I read every agreement before I signed it and I don’t believe in my recollection that I signed any agreement committed Ghana to anything beyond the duration of that particular agreement. You sign an agreement and beyond a point it elapses and after that point, the obligations also elapse and you go ahead negotiate a new one and that is what they have done and this what they are now bringing to parliament for ratification. I haven’t seen that particular agreement that is been discussed because at the moment I was not in Ghana but I want to make it clear that there is nothing in the previous agreement that commits Ghana to the present agreement and if the minister wants to make that clear he should make available copies of that agreement" she pointed out.