KENYA

United Nations leaders attending a rare Security Council session in Nairobi, Kenya, won a pledge on Thursday that Sudan’s government and main southern rebel group will reach a deal to end their two-decade war this year. The agreement came after UN Secretary General Kofi Annan warned the meeting: ”There is no time to waste.”

Kenyan police and unknown attackers exchanged gunfire overnight at the Nairobi residence of Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, witnesses inside his house said on Wednesday. ”I don’t know the motive of the attack, no one was hurt and that is all what I can tell you,” said a resident who asked to remain unnamed.

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Sudan to try to end a 20-month conflict in the country’s western Darfur region, where the UN estimates about 70 000 people have been killed. The Security Council is due to hold a special session on Sudan in Nairobi this week.

A Rwandan rebel force based in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday affirmed its readiness to cooperate in any inquiry into alleged rapes in the region. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda is a mainly Hutu group of fighters, including remnants of those who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

The trial of three Kenyans charged with plotting the bombing of the United States embassy in Kenya in August 1998, which killed more than 200 people, resumed in the Kenyan capital on Monday after a three-month break. The US embassy in Dar es Salaam, in neighbouring Tanzania, was bombed at nearly the same time, killing 11 people.

The president of Somalia’s transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, on Wednesday named Professor Ali Muhammad Gedi as his new prime minister. The appointment was made 10 days ahead of a deadline set by the country’s interim Constitution for the president to name a prime minister.

Conflicting reports from the disputed region of Sool, northern Somalia, indicate that at least 100 people were killed on Friday when forces from the self-declared republic of Somaliland clashed with those of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland. Both sides are accusing the other of initiating the hostilities.

A Kenyan street boy emerged  000 richer this week after stumbling across a local radio station’s top treasure-hunt prize while relieving himself in a Nairobi park. Evans Kamande’s first thoughts were for his mother, who works as a house cleaner in Nairobi.

A marathon public inquiry into Kenya’s biggest financial scandal was suspended on Tuesday amid a legal row over the ejection of two lawyers representing the state. The suspension was announced on the 282nd day of hearings by Peter le Pelley, one of three judges presiding over the Goldenberg inquiry.

A Kenyan man who has married 130 women in 65 years says that ”dictatorship and hard work” is required to make a polygamous family happy and productive. Eighty-five-year-old Ancentus Akuku, also known as ”Danger”, lives in Homa Bay on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya.

The president of the breakaway Republic of Somaliland said on Friday his administration will only negotiate with Somalia if it is for the recognition of their respective states’ sovereignty. ”Somaliland’s independence is sacred and efforts to discuss Somaliland uniting with Somalia are futile and a waste of time,” the president said.

The United Nations special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, Martti Ahtisaari, was expected to arrive in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on Wednesday to discuss the humanitarian situation in the country, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.

Somali veteran politician and soldier Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed was sworn in as the new president of his Horn of Africa country on Thursday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Yusuf, who was elected on Sunday by members of his country’s transitional Parliament, took the oath of office before several African presidents.

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has welcomed the election of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed as Somalia’s transitional president and pledged that the world body will fully support efforts to restore stability in the war-torn Horn of Africa country. The election was held on Sunday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The United Nations expressed fears on Wednesday of ”famine conditions” arising in southern Somalia if violence there is allowed to escalate. ”The current fighting in the area is seriously disrupting the humanitarian operations currently under way,” the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Maxwell Gaylard, said.

With the election of a Speaker of its newly formed Parliament late on Wednesday, Somalia edged closer to its first national government in 13 years. In a delayed and drawn-out session, the parliamentarians elected businessman Shariff Hassan Sheikh Adan as the new Speaker.

The swearing-in of Somalia’s transitional Parliament on August 22 in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and the first meeting of the MPs days later may have gone smoothly, but the real challenges facing the war-ravaged Horn of Africa country have just begun. ”History is littered with dishonoured Somali peace accords,” said an analyst.

The Sudanese government and the main rebel group in the south of the vast country have extended an ongoing ceasefire for three months, amid deadlock in talks aimed at ending 21 years of conflict, the chief mediator said on Tuesday. A civilian protection monitoring team has said that both sides have violated the ceasefire.

The world could face a humanitarian failure if up to half a million refugees return to southern Sudan in the event of a final peace deal between rebels and government forces before the end of the year, the United Nations warned on Monday. Peace talks in Kenya are aimed at ending 21 years of devastating conflict in Sudan.
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Kenyan police used tear gas violently to disperse at least 200 Maasai tribesmen who were demonstrating in the capital, Nairobi, to demand their land back, an AFP journalist reported. ”We have used force to put off the demonstration because it was illegal,” Nairobi police chief Julius Ndegwa said as riot police charged on the Maasai.

The Kenyan government is to dispatch geological experts to its western region to probe new volcanic activities on Mount Elgon on its border with Uganda, which threatens about 20 000 people, officials said on Monday. Mount Elgon, which is 4 321m high, has been dormant for more than a century.

Rangers from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) over the weekend killed four elephants that had strayed from a national park and started destroying crops in villages in central Kenya, police and a KWS official said on Monday. The elephants reportedly destroyed crops, fences and other homestead structures in villages.

Kenya is to write off about six billion shillings (about R481-million) owed by coffee farmers, whose sector has suffered as a result of the depressed world coffee market, the president’s office said on Sunday. Coffee production has steadily slumped from about 127 000 tons in the mid-1980s to about 49 000 tons last year.

Relief agencies in the troubled Sudanese state of West Darfur have set up a working group to monitor and coordinate activities to stem the spread of hepatitis E as cases of the disease continue to be reported, the United Nations said. Twenty-seven people had died across Darfur by August 15 and more than 1 000 had been affected.