Military leaders and officials from north and south Sudan have agreed there would be ”no return to war” after more than a week of bloody clashes over the disputed oil town of Abyei, a senior northern official said on Tuesday. Tens of thousand of civilians fled Abyei last week during clashes between northern and southern troops.
Kenya President Mwai Kibaki said on Wednesday that his country has learned its lesson from post-election violence and promised to focus on improving the economy. Kenya, long considered one of Africa’s most stable countries, suffered weeks of political violence that claimed at least 1 500 lives after the disputed December general elections.
Western governments lashed out at the extension of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest, but the outrage at Burma’s generals was tempered by concern over disrupting aid flows to desperate cyclone victims. Burma has been promised millions of dollars in Western aid after Cyclone Nargis, but this cut no ice with the junta regarding the opposition leader.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, met the former Palestinian prime minister and Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza at the start of a much-delayed United Nations investigation into the shelling by the Israeli military of a Palestinian house which killed 18 members of a single family in Beit Hanoun.
Jimmy Malish huddles under a blanket, looks at the darkening sky and prays that it doesn’t rain again on him and the hundreds of other African migrants camped in the courtyard of a Johannesburg police station. Although President Thabo Mbeki has condemned the violence, on the ground there are few signs the government has stepped in with significant aid for victims.
Burma’s junta extended the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday, a move likely to dismay Western nations who promised millions of dollars in aid after Cyclone Nargis. Officials drove to the Nobel laureate’s lakeside Rangoon home to read out a six-month extension order in person.
A month before a presidential election run-off, Zimbabwe’s opposition said on Tuesday conditions were not conducive for a free and fair poll, but still expressed confidence it would oust Robert Mugabe. "As of yesterday [Monday], at least 50 of our supporters had been killed in violent attacks." the Movement for Democratic Change said.
A Darfur rebel group threatened on Monday to launch new attacks on Khartoum and central Sudan, amid fears that the region’s peace process was unravelling. The threat from the Sudan Liberation Movement’s Unity faction came weeks after Darfur insurgents the Justice and Equality Movement raided Sudan’s capital.
World leaders are to meet next week for urgent talks aimed at preventing tens of millions of the world’s poor dying of hunger as a result of soaring food prices. The summit in Rome is expected to pledge immediate aid to poor countries threatened by malnutrition as well as charting longer-term strategies for improving food production.
Foreign aid workers on Tuesday pressed into Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta, testing the junta’s pledge to open up areas where one million people have yet to receive aid three weeks after the cyclone. Six foreign staff based in Rangoon with the United Nations Children’s Fund were allowed to join teams of mainly Burma workers.
Hollywood filmmaker Sydney Pollack, who won a pair of Academy Awards for the epic romance <i>Out of Africa</i> and earned praise for his acting stints in films such as <i>Tootsie</i> and <i>Michael Clayton</i>, died on May 26 after a battle with cancer, his spokesperson said. He was 73.
There is ”no solution but war” to solve Somalia’s problems, and Somali Islamists must re-arm and fight, a long-time hard-line Islamist leader linked to al-Qaeda said on Monday. In a rare interview, Sheikh Hassan Abdullah Hersi al-Turki urged the United Nations not to send soldiers to shore up an African Union peacekeeping force.
The secretary general of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) said on Monday his country was on the brink of a new north-south civil war, and called on northern forces to leave a disputed oil town. ”We’re on the brink of war. Clashes have already happened,” SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum told a news conference.
The Southern African Development Community (SADC) is to send a beefed-up observer mission for Zimbabwe’s run-off election next month to ensure "greater transparency", Angola’s Foreign Minister was quoted as saying on Monday. Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been lobbying the 14-nation SADC to send more observers.
It took three weeks of waiting for help that never came for the emaciated man to overcome his innate fear of authority in a country under army rule for the last 46 years. ”I didn’t care whether they got angry with me or not,” the man in his late 40s said, recalling the moment he challenged officials deep in the Irrawaddy Delta.
The United Nations said on Monday that a Russian air force plane shot down an unmanned Georgian spy drone over Abkhazia last month, strengthening Tbilisi’s claims that Moscow is aiding the rebel territory.The UN report was the weightiest independent endorsement to date of Tbilisi’s allegation that a Russian jet downed its spy plane on April 20.
Environment ministers from the G8 rich nations on Monday urged their leaders to set a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a small but vital step in the fight against climate change. But they stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets ahead of 2050, a key demand of developing countries in tough United Nations-led talks to forge a new treaty on global warming.
Foreign aid workers saddled up for the cyclone-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta on Monday to see whether army-ruled Burma will honour a promise made by its top general to give them freedom of movement. ”We’re going to head out today and test the boundaries,” said an official from a major Western relief agency.
Britain and other European governments should break from the United States over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter said on Sunday. Carter described the current European Union position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as ”supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as ”embarrassing”.
Mozambique has received nearly 20Â 000 citizens fleeing South Africa, said Deputy Foreign Minister Henrique Banze, adding that the government there had set up three reception centres around the capital Maputo. He denied reports that the Mozambican government had declared a state of emergency.
With his rival back in the country, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe fought for his political survival on Sunday as he kicked off his election campaign. Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai arrived home on Saturday after a six-week absence vowing to end the three decade rule of post-independence leader Mugabe in a run-off election scheduled for June 27.
While big international donors try to persuade Burma’s military rulers to open their doors wider to aid, small groups of volunteers are getting past army checkpoints to reach desperate survivors of Cyclone Nargis. Among them were Catholics and Buddhists seeking to fulfil a charitable mission under extreme circumstances three weeks after the devastating storm left 2,5-million people destitute.
The World Health Organisation’s 193 member states on Saturday overcame their deep divisions over intellectual property rules and endorsed a strategy to help improve developing-country access to drugs and medical tests.
Thousands of people marched through Johannesburg on Saturday, calling for an end to the violence that has killed at least 50 African migrants and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. People in Hillbrow, home to many African immigrants, cheered the march, which was organised by churches and labour unions.
Up to 90 000 people could be displaced by fighting in Sudan’s bitterly contested oil region of Abyei where the United Nations is racing against time to provide aid relief and prevent a return to civil war. Two rounds of heavy fighting between government soldiers and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army have largely obliterated Abyei’s once bustling main town.
South Africa’s security chief on Friday accused rightwingers linked to the former apartheid government of fanning xenophobic violence that has spread to Cape Town, the second largest city and tourist centre. At least 42 people have been killed and thousands driven from their homes in 12 days of attacks.
South Africa’s aspirations to lead the continent are being shredded by the xenophobic mobs who have hacked, shot and beaten to death at least 42 African migrants in the land where apartheid was defeated. The mobs accuse the immigrants of depriving South Africans of scarce jobs and fuelling crime.
The Iranian government has proposed the creation of an international consortium to enrich uranium on its own soil as a way of defusing the tense stand-off over its nuclear programme. The proposal is part of a ”new and comprehensive initiative” put forward by Iran ahead of a planned visit to Tehran by Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief.
In an apparent breakthrough for delivering help to millions of Burma’s cyclone survivors, the military government agreed to allow in ”all” aid workers, United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon said on Friday. The UN Secretary General met junta supremo Than Shwe in his remote new capital of Naypyidaw for more than two hours to ask him to permit more foreign expertise.
World food prices are likely to stay high and volatile for the foreseeable future despite some record crops this year, according to a report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation on Thursday. Food import bills around the world are expected to total more than a trillion US dollars in 2008.
With an impassive handshake, BUrma junta supremo Than Shwe greeted Ban Ki-moon in his remote new capital on Friday at the apex of a high-stakes aid mission by the United Nations chief for the victims of Cyclone Nargis. The 75-year-old Senior General’s stony-faced silence gave no clues as to whether he would overcome his deep suspicions of the outside world.
Although the violent nature of crime in South Africa is often highlighted, white-collar crimes are rampant and impact negatively on citizens’ rights. Bribery and corruption were perceived to be the most prevalent crimes, said a South African Human Rights Commission report.