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/ 11 October 2007
Russia’s latest outburst of passive-aggressive paranoia, aimed at Britain in particular, may reflect a realisation in the Kremlin that Western resistance to its perceived bullying of neighbours, disdain for civil and human rights, and cut-throat energy policy is growing after years of blind eyes, held noses and wishful thinking.
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/ 11 October 2007
South Africa is confident that a ”critical number” of European and African leaders would be in attendance at the planned European Union (EU)-African Union (AU) summit in Portugal in December to make it worthwhile. Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said: ”Summits depend on a number of people to be there, not just one person.”
Women are being regularly tortured by Zimbabwean security forces for their opposition to President Robert Mugabe’s regime, a report by a leading rights group charged on Tuesday. ”Many of us have been detained more than once and suffered extreme abuse perpetrated by state actors,” Jenni Williams, national coordinator of Women of Zimbabwe Arise, said.
A review of the free-trade treaty between the European Union and South Africa is to top the agenda of a South Africa-EU troika ministerial meeting in Pretoria on Wednesday. South Africa’s ambassador to the EU, Anil Sooklal, said it is hoped the mid-term review of the trade treaty could be finalised during the troika meeting.
Guns, machetes and looted public funds are the real instruments of power in Nigeria, where politicians backed by unelected ”godfathers” use hired thugs to win office, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 after three decades of almost continuous army dictatorship, but civilian governments have routinely abused basic human rights.
Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, came under intense pressure on Monday night to order an invasion of northern Iraq following the deadliest attacks for over a decade on the Turkish military and civilians by separatist Kurdish guerrillas.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned on Monday that neither he nor any other senior British government minister will attend a Europe-Africa summit if Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is there. Previously Brown had said he would boycott the December summit, but it has been unclear if Britain could be represented at a lower level.
Climate change is already happening in South Africa, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday during a visit to a biodiversity centre in Cape Town. ”You can see that climate change is already a reality here,” said Merkel, as she visited Biota Africa, a centre where German and South African scientists conduct research on African climate change.
Protests against Burma’s bloody crackdown on dissenters took place in cities around the world on Saturday, with thousands demonstrating in London and smaller gatherings held in Sydney, Stockholm, Bangkok, Paris and elsewhere. The coordinated displays of public condemnation followed the violent crackdown by Burma’s junta on thousands of activists in late September.
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.
Teenager Zhu Xiaotong’s home a few hours’ drive outside Beijing is a world away from the acrid air and snarling traffic jams that have come to dominate China’s energy-hungry capital. Cherry tomatoes, capsicum and spring onions rise up from a little garden patch that forms the centrepiece of her family’s brick courtyard home.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Joseph Kabila sacked his transport minister on Friday after an air crash that killed 52 people in the Central African country, which has one of the world’s worst aviation safety records. The decision was announced as DRC’s Cabinet met to discuss air safety after Thursday’s accident.
President Robert Mugabe presides over a disaster in Zimbabwe but should still be entitled to attend a forthcoming Europe-Africa summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday. Summing up talks in Pretoria with President Thabo Mbeki, Merkel said she made clear her disquiet about the situation across South Africa’s northern border.
Iran’s president accused Israel on Friday of using the Holocaust as a pretext for ”genocide” against Palestinians. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who outraged the West in 2005 by calling Israel a ”tumour” to be wiped off the map, said the truth should be told about World War II and the Holocaust.
European Union and Chinese trade officials have agreed on a new way to handle Chinese textile exports to the bloc when quotas expire on December 31. Officials said the plan might help improve cooperation between the EU and China over the Asian economic powerhouse’s snowballing trade surplus with the 27-nation bloc.
West Africa will miss a December 31 deadline to sign a new trade partnership with the European Union and hopes to keep its preferential commercial privileges for up to two years while it negotiates. Ministers from the Economic Community of West African States were meeting on Friday in Côte d’Ivoire to agree a common approach ahead of talks later this month with the EU.
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.
Condemning Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe is counterproductive and international powers should instead put their weight behind regional diplomatic efforts to unseat him, Tanzania’s president said on Friday. Jakaya Kikwete insisted the diplomatic approach favoured by African leaders ”will pay dividends”.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the world could not stop the Islamic state’s nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to build nuclear bomb, the official IRNA news agency said on Thursday. Ahmadinejad was speaking the day after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner called on the European Union to take the lead in widening financial sanctions on Iran.
A Soviet-era Antonov 26 cargo plane crashed in Kinshasa on Thursday, smashing through a dozen houses and killing 25 people on board as well as a number of people on the ground, officials and the United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo said. Witnesses said it exploded in a fireball on impact.
Burma’s military regime kept up the pressure on its people on Wednesday after last week’s bloody crackdown on protesters as the European Union agreed in principle to punish the junta with sanctions. Troops who last week killed at least 13 and arrested over 1 000 people continued overnight arrests and mounted patrols to strike terror into the population.
The European Union is to hold an extraordinary meeting of national gas experts to discuss the dispute between Ukraine and Russian gas monopoly Gazprom, officials said on Wednesday. The EU Gas Coordination Group will hold an ad-hoc meeting later this month to ”evaluate the situation” and assess its ”possible consequences”.
Insurer Old Mutual plans to buy back £350-million of its shares, roughly 4% of its capital, as part of a programme to improve capital efficiency, it said on Wednesday. South Africa’s largest insurer had said earlier this year it was not considering major acquisitions and could hand excess cash back to shareholders.
The United States House of Representatives has passed a Bill that would force Ethiopia, one of Washington’s strongest military partners in Africa, to make democratic reforms or else lose security aid. The Bill would deny US entry visas to Ethiopian government officials involved in what it calls human rights violations .
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.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has lost his campaign to prevent President Robert Mugabe from attending a Europe-Africa summit in Portugal in December despite the European Union (EU) travel ban on the Zimbabwean president. Brown is also facing stiff resistance to his demand that the EU appoint a special envoy to deal with the Zimbabwe crisis.
Russia threatened on Tuesday to cut gas supplies to Ukraine again in a move that appears to reflect its displeasure at the prospect of a new orange government in Kiev. Gazprom, the state-controlled monopoly, said it would reduce supplies to Ukraine next month unless it settled a bill of more than ,3-billion.
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.
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.
Two dozen foreign embassies in Kenya on Monday called for ”zero tolerance” on campaign violence as elections loom in the East African nation where national votes seldom pass without bloodshed. With campaigns just beginning to roll ahead of an expected December presidential poll, one rally has already been ambushed by men armed with bows-and-arrows.
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/ 29 September 2007
United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari flew to Burma on Saturday carrying worldwide hopes he can persuade its ruling generals to use negotiations instead of guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule. ”He’s the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides,” Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said.