BLANTYRE, Malawi – Officials in Malawi
insisted on Thursday that pop star Madonna was going to adopt a
local child but acknowledged tension with the visiting singer,
who denies having chosen an orphan boy.
"Madonna’s people asked us to identify 12
children aged one, and the Ministry of Women and Child
Development has done (that), and what I know so far is that she
identified one child yesterday," said Minister of Information
Patricia Kaliati.
A spokeswoman for Madonna in the United
States denied again on Thursday that the Grammy-winning
recording star had adopted a child or had asked officials in
Malawi to arrange an adoption for her.
The 48-year-old entertainer arrived in Malawi
this week on a "fact-finding" trip as part of a charitable
initiative to assist an estimated 1 million orphaned children in
the impoverished southern African nation, her spokeswoman, Liz
Rosenberg, said.
"She is going to orphanages, and she is
meeting a lot of children, but she hasn’t adopted one,"
Rosenberg, a Warner Bros. Records executive, told Reuters. "She
is not in the process of adopting a child as we speak. She has
not selected one. She has not asked that 12 children be lined
up. None of that has happened."
Rosenberg issued a similar denial on
Wednesday following initial statements from Malawian officials
that Madonna had adopted a baby boy.
Amid the conflicting accounts, Henry
Chimunthu Banda, Malawi’s minister of energy, mines and natural
resources, said the government would say nothing more until he
met the singer on behalf of the Malawian president on Friday.
"The earlier statements by government have
caused some concerns from the Madonna camp in Malawi," Banda, a
senior minister, told Reuters when asked about the dispute.
He did not provide further details.
Reporters in Malawi have had no access to the
pop star or her entourage since they arrived on a private jet.
Madonna’s trip has stoked high expectations
among Malawi’s poverty-stricken 13 million people, who are
dependent on tobacco exports for economic survival.
Madonna has said she plans to spend at least
$3 million on programs to support orphans in Malawi and another
$1 million to fund a documen-tary about the plight of children
there.
Madonna, who is the mother of two children,
on Wednesday traveled to a village 12 miles outside the capital
Lilongwe, where she is funding the construction of a center to
feed and educate about 1,000 orphans.
On Thursday she and her husband, British filmmaker Guy
Ritchie, visited an orphanage outside the country’s business
capital Blantyre, in southern Malawi. She did not talk to the
press. – Reuters