The Reverend Professor Aaron Michael Oqauye, Speaker of Parliament, has asked nations threatening to withhold development assistance to developing countries refusing to legalize homosexuality, to rethink their position.

He said no nation should be pressurized by anybody into recognizing gay rights and that insisting on this as a pre-condition for providing development support was completely unacceptable.

Those pushing the agenda should also appreciate the right to good health, nutrition, and peace - vital human rights, which should equally be promoted, protected and jealously guarded.

These were what the rich nations should be focusing more effort on, he added.

Prof Oquaye was speaking when a delegation from the Ghana Chapter of the Universal Peace Federation (UPF) paid a courtesy call on him at his office in Parliament.

The group was there to present him with an award and a citation.

He repeated the united and non-negotiable position taken by parliament to shoot down any legislation seeking to give backing to the practice of homosexuality in Ghana that came before it.

The UPF presented the Speaker with the “Ambassador for Peace Award”, “Little Angels of Korea Medal” and a citation.

Prof Oquaye was among laureates, who represented their countries at the Federation’s first Africa Summit held in Dakar, Senegal last January.

The two-day event, organized under the theme “New Africa, interdependence, mutual prosperity and universal values”, attracted 1,200 participants, including 15 sitting and former heads of state, speakers of parliament, ministers and religious leaders from more than 60 countries.

Prof Oquaye said peace was not just the absence of war, and that it was better to work to prevent conflicts from escalating into deaths that would rather bring what he termed “peace in the cemetery which has no value to the living.”

“I love to say that peace in the graveyard is no peace - that place is quiet because there is no life there.”

Dr Helen Osei, the Secretary General of the Ghana Chapter of UPF, announced that the group would hold its second African Summit in South Africa, in the coming November.

The event would be hosted jointly by the South African Government and the family of the late President Nelson Mandela.