The international community must overcome its reluctance to get involved in Somalia and help put an end to abuses there, a special United Nations envoy said on Thursday. ”While more people are talking about Somalia, there is still little action to stop the violence,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah told the Security Council during a debate on whether to send UN peacekeepers to the East African country.
Attacks on four villages in West Darfur in January and February by the Sudanese armed forces amounted to a ”deliberate” military strategy. The attacks resulted in at least 115 deaths, according to a report by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN African Union Mission in Darfur.
Battles erupted in Somalia’s capital on Wednesday between Islamist rebels and Ethiopian troops backing the government a day after the United Nations said it was still too dangerous to send peacekeepers there. Witnesses in northern Mogadishu said three Ethiopian soldiers and at least one insurgent were killed as both sides traded heavy fire.
South African Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma called on Tuesday for eleventh-hour talks in Comoros as African Union troops prepared to support federal forces in a bid to take control of the rebel island of Anjouan. ”The federal government first wants the disputed elections dissolved,” she said.
Sierra Leone’s military chiefs are working on means to downsize from its current 10 000 soldiers to 8 500, Defence Minister Palo Conteh said on Friday, according to a state radio report. ”We cannot allow a large army …We have to downsize to a lean army that can react quickly to a given situation,” he said.
South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki said he opposed a threatened African Union-backed assault by the Comoros archipelago’s troops against the rebel island of Anjouan, saying it should be given time for a poll. Hundreds of federal troops have amassed on nearby Moheli island vowing an imminent assault on hilly, wooded Anjouan.
South Africa on Wednesday rejected ”with contempt” claims by jailed British mercenary Simon Mann that it backed his plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. ”South Africa is thrown in just out of the blue … he says he had a nod from us. I would like to know in what sense he had a nod,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said.
A ”virulent and vicious” smear campaign is being waged against Zimbabwe over the list of observers invited to witness the country’s elections on March 29, the country’s ambassador to South Africa, Simon Moyo, said on Monday. The campaign is being driven by the West and certain sections of the South African media, he said in a statement.
Centuries before European colonialists carved up Africa, Arab traders marvelled at the profits to be reaped in the fabled lands south of the Sahara. ”In the country of Ghana, gold grows in the sand as carrots do and is plucked at sunrise,” wrote Ibn al-Faqih, a ninth-century chronicler.
Senegal wants the international community to guarantee a peace accord between Chad and Sudan to end years of conflict between the two feuding neighbours, President Abdoulaye Wade said. The Senegalese leader will host the signing of a peace pact on Wednesday between Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
African neighbours Chad and Sudan will sign an agreement to end their long-running conflict in Dakar next week, the Senegalese president said on Friday. "There will be the signing of a general agreement and an implementation agreement" on March 12, President Abdoulaye Wade said.
European Union member states and the United States have been excluded from a list of observers who will be invited to monitor the March 29 general elections in Zimbabwe, the government announced on Friday. The only European country that had been invited to send monitors was Russia, while the Commonwealth was also left off the invitation list.
Zimbabwe has invited 47 regional and sub-regional organisations as well as countries from Africa, Asia, the Americas and one European country — Russia — to observe this month’s election, the government mouthpiece Herald reported on Friday.
Sudan vowed on Wednesday to continue its search for a French special forces soldier missing in war-torn Darfur for two days after his European Union peacekeeping patrol strayed across the border from Chad. The commando went missing on Monday when at least one vehicle taking part in the EU’s mission to Chad crossed into Sudan.
The United Nations in Sudan accused a rebel group on Monday of blocking access to a mountainous area in Darfur where 20 000 people are trapped after fighting between the government and rebels. Ameerah Haq, the UN humanitarian chief for Sudan, said an assessment mission to the Jabel Moun area was denied access by the Justice and Equality Movement.
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/ 29 February 2008
France will renegotiate all its defence accords with African countries, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday in a move that could scale back France’s military support for some of its closest allies. France has defence cooperation agreements with several former colonies under which its forces provide varying degrees of military assistance.
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/ 28 February 2008
Mediator Kofi Annan said Kenya’s government and opposition had reached agreement on a power-sharing deal at talks on Thursday to end the country’s deadly post-election crisis. ”We have come to an understanding on the coalition agreement,” Annan told reporters.
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/ 28 February 2008
Mediator Kofi Annan launched a new bid on Thursday for a political compromise to end Kenya’s post-election crisis, bringing the country’s feuding leaders to the same table for the first time in a month. The opposition had threatened to hold mass street protests on Thursday, but called them off after meeting Annan.
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/ 28 February 2008
French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrived in Cape Town on Thursday morning for a two-day state visit, which will include discussions with President Thabo Mbeki and top business leaders. Sarkozy was welcomed by Mbeki at Tuynhuys, where a 21-gun salute was fired in his honour while a military band played the French and South African national anthems.
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/ 28 February 2008
African Union chief and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete pushed ahead on Thursday with talks to end the Kenyan political crisis. Kikwete chaired talks between President Mwai Kibaki, opposition chief Raila Odinga and former United Nations secretary general and chief mediator Kofi Annan in a fresh bid to resolve the two-month crisis.
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/ 27 February 2008
Kenya opposition leader Raila Odinga on Wednesday called off street protests that had been set to press the government to strike a power-sharing deal to end the country’s post-election crisis.
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/ 26 February 2008
A new round of talks to end Kenya’s political crisis started on Tuesday with no clear sign of an agreement on power-sharing and with the opposition threatening to resume nationwide protests. The talks being mediated by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan had come to a standstill on Monday.
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/ 26 February 2008
The deadly conflict in Darfur entered its sixth year on Tuesday with no solution in sight, as Khartoum continued to resist the full deployment of a peacekeeping force amid a fresh wave of bombings. The anniversary coincides with visits to the country by Washington’s special envoy for Sudan, Richard Williamson, and China’s point man for Darfur, Liu Giujin, for top-level talks.
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/ 24 February 2008
The Ugandan government said it had signed a permanent ceasefire accord with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group on Saturday, a landmark step in efforts to end more than two decades of civil war. Government delegation spokesperson Captain Chris Magezi called the accord ”another major breakthrough”.
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/ 21 February 2008
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has urged the Sudanese government and all rebel groups to agree to a ceasefire in Darfur, saying deteriorating security is undermining efforts to help thousands of civilians caught in an upsurge in fighting.
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/ 21 February 2008
United States President George Bush, winding up a trip to Africa, promised war-scarred Liberia that the US will see its staunchest ally on the continent out of ”days of challenge and sorrow”. Bush vowed sustained US help to battle poverty and disease as well as an education initiative.
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/ 21 February 2008
Kenya’s government said on Thursday it agreed in principle to creating a prime minister’s post demanded by the opposition, in a possible breakthrough for a political crisis some worry could explode into violence again. Local and international pressure has grown for a deal to end the stand-off over President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election on December 27.
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/ 21 February 2008
South Africa criticised the United Nations on Wednesday for lack of action to support the peace process in Somalia even though the UN Security Council renewed the mandate of an African peacekeeping mission there for another six months.
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/ 19 February 2008
Billionaire philanthropist George Soros made his fortune on the markets and is giving a lot of it to Africa. Last week he hosted an Africa Forum in Dakar on whether the continent is moving closer to his open society ideal. Ferial Haffajee asked him about the global economy, African governance and the role of China in Africa.
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/ 17 February 2008
United States President George Bush on Sunday met Tanzania’s leader to discuss Africa’s political crises before signing a nearly -million grant to help stimulate economic growth. On the second stop of a five-nation trip where he has received a warm welcome, Bush will spend the day discussing projects to fight HIV/Aids and malaria.
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/ 16 February 2008
The United Nations must deploy more troops quickly in west Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region, even without their full equipment, or risk losing Darfuris’ trust, a senior United Nations commander said on Saturday. The most important first step is to give displaced Darfuris confidence that the troops will protect them, said Balla Keita, the UN-African Union commander of West Darfur.
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/ 16 February 2008
President George Bush set off on Friday on a five-nation tour of Africa, touting American compassion for the poor on a continent where he already basks in high approval ratings. Bush aims to use the week-long Africa voyage, likely his last as US president, to bolster his legacy and highlight efforts to resolve regional disputes.