A key Darfur rebel leader warned on Saturday his movement will not attend peace talks this month in Libya unless the United Nations and the African Union can convince a rival group to unite its splinter factions.Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, had said he would attend talks set to begin October 27 in Tripoli, Libya.
African diplomats presented a united front on Saturday to support Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s presence at an upcoming European Union-Africa summit despite strong European reservations. "The African Union wants all African countries to take part" in the summit in Lisbon in December, an official from the body’s headquarters in Addis Ababa said.
Grenades hurled by insurgents killed at least five Somalis around the capital’s main market, a witness said on Friday. Mohamed Abdulle Matan, one of the main traders at the Bakara market, said two soldiers were also wounded in the attack, a day after the government announced a major security crackdown on Islamic insurgents.
Sudanese government forces and militia groups razed a town in central Darfur where African Union soldiers were attacked, rebel leaders said on Friday, adding the troops were also threatening to raid a nearby town. Sudan’s army and Darfur rebel movements blame each other for last week’s assault on the AU base in Haskanita in which 10 African Union soldiers were killed.
Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel was expected to urge South African President Thabo Mbeki in talks in Pretoria on Friday to increase pressure for a resolution to the crisis in neighbouring Zimbabwe. German sources said Merkel was determined to press Mbeki to do more to ensure an end to alleged human rights abuses in the country.
Mogadishu traders were dejectedly sifting through the charred remains of their shops on Thursday after a huge fire destroyed one-third of Bakara market, once the Somali capital’s main business hub. The vast market area and its intricate network of alleyways were completely disfigured by the fire.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, on her first visit to sub-Saharan Africa, called on Thursday for more democratic opening in Ethiopia, a key ally of the West now under scrutiny over rights issues. On the first leg of a five-day tour, the German leader urged Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to provide greater space in Ethiopia for both political opposition and the media.
International elder statesmen, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners, said on Thursday that Darfur was rife with violence and deeply divided after returning from the Sudanese region. They warned rape was widespread and being ignored by the Sudanese authorities and also urged Khartoum to hand over war-crimes suspects for trial at the International Criminal Court.
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation was launched in October 2006 to promote good governance in Africa with the support of world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Alpha Konaré, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. On October 22 2007, the foundation will announce the winner of the world’s biggest prize, the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, to be awarded to a former African executive head of state.
Sudan’s president has promised to pay -million in compensation to the country’s war-torn Darfur region, tripling a previous pledge, former United States president Jimmy Carter said on Wednesday. Carter also publicly clashed with a Sudanese security chief who had objected to the visit to a Darfur tribal chief.
African Union (AU) peacekeepers are outgunned and outnumbered by rebels and militias in Darfur, the AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said on Tuesday. He said this was one reason an AU base in Haskanita, south-east Darfur, was overwhelmed so quickly during a recent attack on the peacekeepers.
Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to Africa on Wednesday with the message that Germany is keen to step up cooperation with the continent to help combat poverty and disease. The chancellor’s trip to Ethiopia, South Africa and Liberia from October 3 to 7 will focus on economic development, social issues and business ties.
A group of elder statesmen, including former US president Jimmy Carter and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu, urged all sides in Darfur’s bloodshed to reach a peace deal as they began a tour on Tuesday of the war-torn region. The visit comes days after rebels overran an African Union peacekeeping base in northern Darfur.
The African Union denied on Tuesday that troop-contributing nations had threatened to pull their forces from a mission to Darfur after a rebel attack on an AU peacekeeping base. The AU says 10 soldiers were killed and 10 others wounded after the weekend raid — the worst assault on AU forces since 2004 when the 7 000-strong mission was deployed.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would travel to Zimbabwe this month to recommend multilateral mediation by African heads of state to try to solve the crisis in the Southern African country. ”Mbeki is a man of goodwill … [but] we should tackle the problem at the level of several heads of state, including Thabo Mbeki,” he said.
The 1 000 Darfur rebels waited until sunset, the end of the Ramadan fast, to begin their assault. Some of the outgunned African peacekeepers, caught by surprise, fought back. Others fled into the scrublands, and at the end 10 of them were dead.
The African Union on Monday began probing an unprecedented attack on one of its bases in Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur that left 10 peacekeepers dead and 25 missing, vowing to punish those responsible. ”The inquiry is under way and we will make its conclusions public,” AU Mission in Sudan spokesperson Noureddine Mezni said.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would pull his country’s troops out of Darfur if it was determined that African peacekeepers who were killed at the weekend were not equipped to defend themselves. Twenty African Union soldiers were killed or injured and 40 missing after an assault on the Haskanita base in Darfur on Saturday night.
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/ 30 September 2007
Ten African Union (AU) soldiers were killed and 50 were missing after armed men launched an assault on an AU base in Darfur, the worst attack on AU troops since they deployed in Sudan’s violent west in 2004. The AU called it a ”deliberate and sustained” assault by about 30 vehicles, which overran and looted the peacekeepers’ camp on Saturday night.
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/ 29 September 2007
The United States on Friday warned that Somali Islamist militants might kidnap Western tourists on vulnerable Kenyan beaches. In a message to US nationals in Kenya, the US embassy in Nairobi said it had received information that Islamic extremists from southern Somalia may be planning kidnapping operations across the border.
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/ 27 September 2007
Relief agency World Vision has scaled back its operations in South Darfur after its staff suffered three attacks within a week, an agency official said on Thursday. ”World Vision has not suspended operations — we have scaled down,” Michael Arunga, communications manager for World Vision, told Reuters. ”There have been three attacks in one week.”
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/ 26 September 2007
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown renewed on Wednesday a pledge to snub Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at a European Union-Africa summit in December, but vowed to help his suffering people by reiterated London’s support for the ”reconstruction” of the economically ravaged former British colony.
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/ 26 September 2007
President Robert Mugabe’s attempts to control prices amid Zimbabwe’s worsening economic crisis have backfired and now even the black market faces shortages, a senior British diplomatic source said on Wednesday. Under Mugabe’s 27-year rule, Zimbabwe has plunged from prosperity to penury.
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/ 26 September 2007
South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu said on Tuesday he was ”devastated” by the human rights abuses of President Robert Mugabe’s government in Zimbabwe. Tutu said he struggles to understand how Mugabe changed so drastically after steering the country to independence in 1980.
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/ 26 September 2007
Massive resource transfers to poor countries from rich countries are needed if the world wants to attain its Millennium Developmental Goals, South African President Thabo Mbeki told the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York late on Tuesday.
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/ 25 September 2007
Ethiopia said on Tuesday it may terminate the pact ending its border war with Eritrea, accusing its smaller neighbour of breaching the deal on several fronts including coordinating ”terrorist activity”. Relations between the two nations are at their lowest since a 1998 to 2000 border war killed 70 000 people.
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/ 25 September 2007
African countries must diversify their economies in order to fight poverty, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation said on Tuesday at the first session of a gathering of African Union trade and industry ministers, hosted by South Africa at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.
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/ 24 September 2007
Southern African nations on Monday lined up behind Robert Mugabe in a row over whether the Zimbabwean President would be invited to a European Union-Africa summit in December, saying they would boycott the event if he was banned. The meeting in Lisbon would be the first in seven years.
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/ 21 September 2007
Peacekeeping missions in Africa are hampered by difficulties in generating forces and a shortage of funding, a senior United Nations official said on Friday. Nick Seymour, senior political officer with the UN’s peacekeeping department, said getting enough troops to conflict zones will always be a challenge.
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/ 21 September 2007
Gordon Brown or Robert Mugabe? One won’t go to a summit between Europe and Africa in December, but the Portuguese hosts say the potential rewards of closer ties between the two continents outweigh the antagonism between the leaders of Britain and Zimbabwe.
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/ 20 September 2007
Britain will call on the European Union to extend sanctions against members of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite as the country’s humanitarian crisis plumbs new depths, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday. He urged the international community to do everything it can to relieve human suffering in Zimbabwe.
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/ 20 September 2007
Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri urged Sudanese Muslims in a video posted on Thursday to fight a force of African Union and United Nations peacekeepers. Al-Zawahri accused Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of abandoning his Muslim brothers to appease the United States.