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/ 20 November 2007
A meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders has failed to produce a joint declaration for a Middle East summit due next week in the United States, after they could not resolve key differences. The declaration that diplomats originally expected Israel and the Palestinians to agree on has yet to be agreed.
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/ 16 November 2007
The breakaway province of Kosovo holds a parliamentary election on Saturday, ahead of a showdown with Serbia over the ethnic Albanian majority’s demand for independence. Prime Minister Agim Ceku is stepping down, so the election will bring in new leadership.
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/ 14 November 2007
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday urged arch-rivals Eritrea and Ethiopia to settle their border dispute peacefully and to take ”concrete steps” to demarcate their frontier. It also appealed to the two sides to ”refrain from using force and settle their disagreements by peaceful means”.
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/ 13 November 2007
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, raised domestic tensions over the country’s nuclear policy to higher levels on Monday by labelling his opponents ”traitors” who are working for the West and threatened to expose them in a political witch-hunt.
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/ 2 November 2007
Six world powers meet on Friday to discuss imposing a third round of sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to stop enriching uranium, which they suspect could be used to build nuclear weapons. Talks among top officials from the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany were due to start in the morning and last several hours.
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/ 2 November 2007
Amnesty International urged governments on Friday not to send anyone suspected of crimes during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide to be tried in the country, saying it had serious concerns over the justice system. The Central African country wants suspects in the 100-day slaughter of 800Â 000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus to be transferred to its custody.
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/ 1 November 2007
Félicien Kabuga has a reward of several million dollars on his head, and tops the list of fugitives of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Yet, he’s managed to escape justice for years. The ICTR was set up in northern Tanzania by the United Nations in 1995 to bring high-level perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide to justice.
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/ 30 October 2007
The United Nations Security Council renewed arms and diamond sanctions against Côte d’Ivoire on Monday in a bid to make the West African country stick to the terms of a peace process. A resolution passed by the council extended the sanctions for a further year but promised to review them during that period.
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/ 25 October 2007
Ratcheting up the pressure on Tehran, the United States on Thursday designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a proliferater of weapons of mass destruction and its elite Qods force a supporter of terrorism. In total, Washington slapped sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, major banks and individuals as well as the Defence Ministry.
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/ 24 October 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice singled out Iran on Wednesday as ”perhaps the single greatest challenge” to US security, but stressed that diplomacy was the preferred way to end its nuclear drive. President George Bush last week warned that a nuclear-armed Iran evoked the threat of ”World War III”.
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/ 17 October 2007
Burma’s ruling junta blamed Buddhist monks Wednesday for last month’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests, as it admitted nearly 3 000 people had been detained over the rallies. Troops and police quelled the protests in late September, leaving at least 13 dead and drawing international condemnation.
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/ 16 October 2007
Libya, Vietnam and Burkina Faso were on Tuesday elected to non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for the years 2008/09. The three countries were unopposed and obtained the required two-thirds majority of votes in favour from the 192-member UN General Assembly.
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/ 15 October 2007
The leaders of emerging powerhouses South Africa, India and Brazil will meet in Pretoria this week to bolster trade and energy ties as well as flex their collective muscle on world affairs. All three countries see their alliance, known as Ibsa (India-Brazil-South Africa), as an opportunity to push the concerns of developing countries in the southern hemisphere.
A Sudanese army air and ground assault killed at least 45 people in the Darfur town of Muhajiriya, where bodies littered the streets amid burned out buildings, rebels who control the area said on Tuesday. ”Until now the number of dead civilians are at least 40, with 80 missing and a large number of injured,” the Sudan Liberation Army said.
United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari met Burma junta chief Than Shwe and detained opposition Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday at the end of four-day mission to halt a bloody crackdown on the biggest democracy protests in 20 years. There was no word on whether Gambari’s single meeting with Than Shwe had persuaded him to relax his iron grip.
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.
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/ 30 September 2007
A suicide bomber killed 28 Afghan troops and two civilians on Saturday in an attack on an army bus in Kabul, the Afghan president said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest in the Afghan capital since the hard-line Islamist movement was ousted from power for harbouring al-Qaeda leaders.
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/ 27 September 2007
People in Burma were already living on the edge before the government doubled fuel prices, raising the cost of just about everything and shoving many over the precipice. The sudden announcement of fuel price hikes on August 15 became the tipping point of a crisis that had been building for a long time.
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/ 26 September 2007
World governments vowed on Wednesday to hold Burma’s military rulers to account for a bloody crackdown on mass street protests, as the United Nations Security Council prepared to meet in emergency session and European Union officials began drawing up new sanctions.
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/ 19 September 2007
Thousands of Buddhist monks on Wendesday marched in protest against Burma’s military government one day after police fired warning shots and used teargas to disperse demonstrators. At least 2 000 monks turned out in the city of Sittwe, in north-west Burma, the scene of Tuesday’s clashes.
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/ 18 September 2007
Russia expressed worry on Tuesday over the possibility of war with Iran as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner pressed for tougher sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasised Russia’s "concern" over "multiple reports that military action against Iran is being seriously considered.
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/ 17 September 2007
France is to invest about €400-million in the next four years to help South Africa with service delivery, job creation and environmental and sustainable development, French ambassador Denis Pietton said on Monday. ”In terms of service delivery, we will help with providing development assistance,” the ambassador said in Pretoria.
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/ 13 September 2007
South Africa is using its seat on the United Nations Security Council to push for troops from a hybrid UN/African Union peacekeeping force to be on the ground in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur by next month. South Africa will use its position at the UN to ”insist” on some troops being deployed by October.
<i>Gandhi My Father</i> signals an intensification of trade and cultural links between India and South Africa on an unprecedented scale, writes Matthew Krouse.
South Africa’s assumption of the United Nations Security Council’s rotating presidency this week could hardly have come at a more contentious time.