- Duale claim the 60 years old treaty is a raw deal for the country.
- Italy has refused to fulfill its part of the bargain, he said.
Image: PCS
Kenya is headed for a worse diplomatic tiff with Italy after the state initiated process to withdraw from a joint treaty accusing their counterpart of threatening the sovereignty of the country.
Defence Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told MPs he has briefed both the President and Attorney General of the intention to pull out from the bilateral treaty he termed as a raw deal to Kenya.
Italy and Kenya entered a deal for the establishment of the Lugi Brogoli Malindi Space Center, a deal that Duale claimed Italy has refused to fulfil its part.
The CS who was appearing before the National Assembly Implementation Committee chaired by Budalangi MP Raphael Wanjala, asked MPs to help them in fast-tracking the termination of the treaty.
He was accompanied by the Kenya Space Agency acting Director general Brigadier Hilary Kipkosgei.
The facility that has seen Rome getting billions of shillings from sale of data, has been hosted in the country for the last 60 years.
“Kenya is yet to see significant benefit of this agreement either locally or nationally despite its in existence for the last and 60 years. The centre is only benefiting the Italian government. The Italian side has made only token fulfillments on select obligations while avoiding the substantive ones,” Duale said.
“The land they have belongs to us and we know how to take it from them but we have said that Parliament must be involved in the event we exit the agreement and that is why we are here. As at now, we have sent a signal to them because we have already briefed the Commander in Chief about this, we will also prepare a Cabinet memo with a clause to exit with the blessing of this committee.”
Duale said his efforts to have Kenya benefit from commercial activities the Italian government are engaged with the third parties has been frustrated by Rome.
To demonstrate lack of goodwill, Duale revealed that both the executive and lawmakers in the last Parliament have been denied entry in to the facility.
“In the last Parliament we were denied entry in to the facility. Also when I was the leader of Majority I refused to table this agreement so that the Kenyan and the Italian governments could sit and engage. To my surprise two months after I was kicked out as the leader of majority, this agreement was brought back to Parliament and it was passed by the House,” the CS said.
Duale further said the current commercial activities at the Malindi Space Centre are exclusively benefitting the Italian government thorough the Italian Space Agency and its Western partner agencies through tracking, telemetry and command TTAQ services, and provision of space science and astronomical data to the western science community at the expense of Kenya.
According to the CS, he has written many protest letters to Italian authorities to express government discontent with the deal. All the letters have been ignored.
The fallout has been so bad that the CS told MPs he has declined to attend a joint inter-ministerial meeting in Rome scheduled for July 18, until his demands, that will see Kenya benefit from the treaty, is met.