Top international aid agencies warned on Wednesday that war-scarred Somalia has become too dangerous for its workers to help more than one million civilians living rough, as fresh fighting erupted. Four Somali soldiers and two civilians were killed when Islamist fighters raided the town of Jowhar, near Mogadishu, officials said.
Zimbabwe’s crackdown on political dissent may need to be discussed by the United Nations Security Council, a prominent Southern African human rights activist declared this week. Opponents of President Robert Mugabe have reported large-scale harassment and intimidation in the tense period leading to elections due later this month.
The United States accused Libya on Thursday of preventing the Security Council from condemning as a ”terrorist attack” a deadly assault on a Jewish school in Jerusalem. The US delegation had hoped the council would unanimously support the text but Libya, backed by several other council members, prevented its adoption.
South Africa was not swayed by any major power to vote in favour of a new United Nations Security Council resolution imposing further sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday. The resolution was approved on Monday by a vote of 14-0, with Indonesia abstaining.
The United Nations Security Council is expected to adopt a third round of sanctions against Iran for its nuclear programme on Monday, but diplomats said this might be the first round that is not approved unanimously. Tehran denies Western charges it seeks nuclear weapons and has ignored three previous Security Council resolutions.
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/ 29 February 2008
Uganda’s government and the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army have signed the last in a series of documents paving the way for a final peace agreement to end one of Africa’s longest-running conflicts. But only hours later, the LRA delegation stormed out of a meeting held after the signing ceremony late on Friday
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/ 22 February 2008
Serb rioters enraged by Kosovo’s secession stormed the United States embassy in Belgrade and set it on fire, leaving one person dead and drawing swift condemnation from Washington and the United Nations Security Council. The US State Department said the lack of protection for its mission was intolerable and demanded the Security Council respond.
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/ 20 February 2008
A group of Nobel laureates called on Wednesday for an arms embargo against Burma, dismissing elections planned for 2010 as flawed if pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from standing. Seven laureates, including Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said the junta should face sanctions for its crackdown on Buddhist monks.
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/ 18 February 2008
The South African government is still deciding whether to recognise Kosovo as an independent country, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Monday. It is expected that the decision would have to be taken soon as it would again be discussed by the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday afternoon.
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/ 17 February 2008
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia on Sunday, ending a long chapter in the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia. Serbia responded immediately by calling its mainly Albanian breakaway province a false state and condemning the United States for supporting it.
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/ 14 February 2008
China was facing a major international crisis linked to the Olympics on Thursday amid mounting pressure over its role in Darfur after United States filmmaker Steven Spielberg severed his links to the Games. So far neither the Foreign Ministry nor the Olympic organising committee has responded to the decision by Spielberg.
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/ 12 February 2008
A group of Nobel Peace laureates sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao on Tuesday urging the Beijing Games host to uphold Olympic ideals by pressing its ally, Sudan, to stop atrocities in Darfur. In more than four years of conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, 200 000 people have died and 2,5-million have been driven from their homes.
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/ 10 February 2008
Chad’s rebels said on Saturday they controlled the centre of the landlocked country and would hold their position in an effort to lure government troops from the capital into an open battle in the desert. A spokesperson for the rebels said they occupied the towns of Mongo and Bitkine in rugged central Chad, about 500km from the capital.
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/ 8 February 2008
Residents of Chad’s curfew-bound capital, Ndjamena, did their best on Friday to resume normal life amid the ruins of a rebel attack and mounting protests over arbitrary arrests and alleged summary executions. The Chadian army said the rebels who were driven back from Ndjamena had withdrawn to Mongo, 400km east of the city.
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/ 7 February 2008
Chad President Idriss Déby Itno called on the European Union on Thursday to deploy a peacekeeping force urgently to the east, as his government sought to tighten security after a weekend rebel assault. Prime Minister Nouradine Delwa Kassire Coumakoye announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew across the capital, Ndjamena.
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/ 6 February 2008
Chad’s government is in total control of the country after beating off a rebel offensive, President Idriss Déby Itno said on Wednesday. Making his first public appearance since rebels attacked the capital, Ndjamena, on the weekend, Déby accused the president of neighbouring Sudan of backing the rebel offensive.
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/ 5 February 2008
It is hoped that four more South Africans will be airlifted from Chad to Gabon on Tuesday, the Department of Foreign Affairs said. The four South Africans were already at the French military base in Chad’s capital Ndjamena. Three other South Africans remained stranded and were still hoping to fly out of the country.
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/ 5 February 2008
The United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously condemned the rebel attacks in Chad and urged world support for the embattled government as the insurgents threatened a new assault on the capital. A statement drafted by France, Chad’s former colonial ruler, "strongly condemns these attacks and all attempts at destabilisation by force".
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/ 4 February 2008
Thousands of civilians fled Chad’s capital Ndjamena on Monday after rebel forces pulled back from a two-day assault, but the rebels said they would attack again to try to topple President Idriss Déby Itno, whose government said it had beaten off more than 2Â 000 insurgents.
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/ 2 February 2008
Rebels seized Chad’s capital, Ndjamena, on Saturday after intense fighting with government forces, military and rebel sources said, as President Idriss Déby Itno remained holed up in the presidential palace. ”The whole of the city is in the hands of the rebels. It’s down to mopping-up operations,” said a military source.
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/ 31 January 2008
A one-month delay to consider a new United Nations Security Council draft resolution that would punish Iran for moving ahead with its nuclear programme would not be a disaster, a South African official said on Thursday. The Security Council’s five permanent members, along with Germany, have circulated a draft that would toughen existing sanctions on Iran.
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/ 24 January 2008
South Africa will have a second opportunity this year to head the United Nations Security Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. South Africa, a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council, will take over the presidency of the UN-decision making body in April again.
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/ 24 January 2008
A multi-disciplinary team of international counter-terrorism experts will visit South Africa later this year, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday. The United Nations Security Council’s counter-terrorism executive directorate will assess South Africa’s counter-terrorism efforts during a visit this year.
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/ 22 January 2008
World powers said they would have to overcome key differences on Tuesday to agree on a new sanctions resolution against Iran that aims to ratchet up pressure on Tehran to curb sensitive nuclear work. The West has been engaged in a diplomatic showdown with Iran over its nuclear programme since 2002.
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/ 12 January 2008
The United Nations Security Council opened the door on Friday to new economic, political or military sanctions against Sudan because of an attack by its troops on a UN peacekeeping convoy earlier this week. The council said it ”condemns in the strongest possible terms” Monday’s attack on UN peacekeepers by ”elements of the Sudanese armed forces”.
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/ 31 December 2007
Disguised as an Irish priest and taking advantage of the New Year festivities, Donald Woods launched a dramatic escape 30 years ago to expose one of South Africa’s most notorious apartheid crimes. As the country prepared to ring in the new year, the white liberal editor managed to evade house arrest and cross over into the tiny kingdom of Lesotho.
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/ 24 December 2007
Iran will soon announce an international tender for building 19 nuclear power plants, a week after Russia said it had begun fuel deliveries to the Islamic state’s first such facility. Kazem Jalali, a spokesperson for Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, said each power plant would have a capacity of 1 000 megawatts.
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/ 20 December 2007
Aid groups urged the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to set a 30-day deadline for Sudan to stop obstructing the planned January 1 deployment of UN-African Union peacekeepers to Darfur or face sanctions. ”The new hybrid peacekeeping force for Darfur is being set up to fail,” said a statement.
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/ 17 December 2007
Russia warned on Monday that Kosovo could slip into ”uncontrollable crisis,” ahead of a United Nations Security Council showdown over the Serbian province’s push for independence. The Russian Foreign Ministry warned that the ”indulgence” of some countries in allowing Kosovo to move towards independence could have ”serious negative consequences” for stability.
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/ 5 December 2007
A jubilant Iranian leadership called on Tuesday for plans for new United Nations sanctions against the country to be dropped in the face of the United States report confirming it had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme. The report has forced America’s European allies to re-evaluate policy towards Iran on Tuesday.
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/ 5 December 2007
United States President George Bush is not known for changing his mind. Unmoved by the collective wisdom of the US intelligence community, he still insists that Iran is a threat, even if it did give up its nuclear weapons programme four years ago.
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/ 29 November 2007
A British teacher accused of insulting Muslims after her class called a teddy bear Mohammad spent more than five hours behind closed doors in a Khartoum courtroom on Thursday as a judge heard the case against her. She was arrested and charged after one of the school staff reported her to the authorities.