Inside Peshawar’s cloistered mosques, high in the rugged passes of the North-West Frontier, and deep in the upholstered opposition salons of Lahore, there is growing consensus it is time for Pervez Musharraf to go. But who will replace the general president, Pakistan’s unelected leader since 1999, and how his departure can be achieved are questions so far lacking answers.
It has been nearly two years since the appearance of the first pictures of United States soldiers humiliating and torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When the pictures first stunned the world, President George W Bush spoke of ”disgraceful conduct by a few troops who dishonoured our country”.
When my son was three, I had to take him and the baby to Khayelitsha to do a job because the nanny was ill. After a longish silence in which he stared out of the window at the world outside, he remarked: ”Mom, I think most of the people here speak Xhosa.” Typical of a parent born before 1990, I thought: ”How odd that he didn’t remark that they are black.”
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President George Bush announced on Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will address the United Nations Security Council, seeking a rapid deployment of peacekeepers to Sudan. Bush said Rice would address the Security Council on Tuesday, following last week’s peace agreement between the government and rebels.
Khartoum said on Monday it will next week start disarming militias accused of carrying out atrocities in the western Darfur region. The process of disarming all militias will ”begin on May 15 and President Omar al-Beshir has already instructed the armed forces to commence”, said Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmed, Khartoum’s chief negotiator on Darfur.
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Jacob Zuma castigated the media for having pre-judged him after he was acquitted on a charge of rape by the Johannesburg High Court on Monday. Speaking in Zulu after the verdict, he told supporters at Beyers Naude Square: ”They insulted me and called me names.”
The task of accomplishing national reconciliation has not yet been concluded, President Thabo Mbeki said on Monday. Addressing a joint sitting of Parliament to mark the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution, he warned against disregard for the law and the rights of others. Mbeki also urged continued respect for democracy.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has undergone surgery to relieve pressure on his brain following his fall from a palm tree, his spokesperson confirmed on Monday. Richards (62) underwent the operation in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was taken for treatment to a brain haemorrhage following the accident on the south Pacific Ocean island of Fiji two weeks ago.
Heavy rains and flooding since the beginning of the year have killed 102 people and damaged thousands of homes across much of Colombia, according to state rescue agency Socorro Nacional. On Sunday, four more people died in a landslide in a poor Bogotá neighbourhood, and much of the capital remains under emergency warning due to elevated river levels.