President Thabo Mbeki must be relieved of his duties as mediator in the current impasse in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said in Johannesburg on Thursday. ”We want to thank President Mbeki for all of his efforts, but President Mbeki needs to be relieved of his duties,” he told reporters.
Pope Benedict, celebrating a stadium Mass for 45 000 people, acknowledged on Thursday that the United States paedophile priests scandal caused ”indescribable pain and harm” to victims but asked Catholics to love their pastors. ”No words of mine can describe the pain and harm inflicted by such abuse,” he said.
Kenya swore in a power-sharing government on Thursday to soothe fury over a disputed election that plunged the East African country into a bloody crisis. ”Our people are now in the process of reconciliation,” President Mwai Kibaki said at the ceremony, nearly four months after the December 27 poll that triggered extreme violence.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday it will cut food rations by half for up to three million people in Darfur starting next month because attacks on its trucks have reduced stocks. The agency said 60 WFP-contracted trucks have been hijacked in the western Sudanese province since the start of the year.
Western states joined the United Nations in urging action to ensure a fair outcome from Zimbabwe’s elections, but most African countries avoided the issue at a summit of the Security Council on Wednesday. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: ”No one thinks, having seen the results of polling stations, that President [Robert] Mugabe has won.”
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday expressed grave concern at the mounting violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel and urged all parties to show restraint. "The secretary general is gravely concerned at the escalation of violence in Gaza and southern Israel," his press office said in a statement.
Former United Nations chief Kofi Annan on Wednesday urged Kenyans to support the new coalition government, saying the deeply divided country had a long way to go after a post-election crisis. Annan mediated a power-sharing accord that curbed months of violence following disputed elections.
African National Congress president Jacob Zuma, in his toughest statement yet on Zimbabwe, expressed apprehension on Wednesday at the post-election deadlock there and its impact on the neighbouring region. In a widening disagreement with President Thabo Mbeki, Zuma said: ”The region cannot afford a deepening crisis in Zimbabwe.”
A coalition of Zimbabwean doctors said on Wednesday its members had seen and treated more than 150 patients who had been beaten and tortured since the elections at the end of March. The independent Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said 157 people had been treated between the elections on March 29 and April 14.
President Robert Mugabe’s security forces clamped down hard on unrest during a general strike in Zimbabwe, arresting dozens of opposition supporters before the stoppage fizzled out on Wednesday. The security forces scaled back their presence in the capital as it became clear that the call for people to remain off work had failed.
South African President Thabo Mbeki had intended to lead a summit on Wednesday at the United Nations in New York that would focus on the increasing peacekeeping chores of African Union troops. But on Tuesday, it became clear that Mbeki would not be able to dodge the ongoing election crisis in Zimbabwe.
Rescue workers have recovered 21 bodies from the crash site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a passenger plane smashed into a crowded market on take-off, the chairperson of the airline said late on Tuesday — but they have so far been unable to establish if any of the plane’s passengers were among the victims.
A passenger plane carrying 85 people crashed into a crowded neighbourhood in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) town of Goma on Tuesday, and only six survivors have been found so far, government officials said. Smoke engulfed the charred ruins of the aircraft, which appeared to have broken in two.
Cambodia on Tuesday quietly marked the 10-year anniversary of Khmer Rouge dictator Pol Pot’s death, amid fears that time is running out to try ageing regime leaders before a genocide tribunal. Pol Pot, the tyrant who turned Cambodia into killing fields in the late 1970s, died on April 15 1998, reportedly from a heart attack.
Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession that is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch. You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters over the past year, that of wheat by 130%. There are food crises in 37 countries.
Newly appointed Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Monday urged the new government, comprising former rivals, to work together to enhance reconciliation in the deeply divided nation. ”The process of reconciliation has begun and the Cabinet must speak in one voice,” Odinga told reporters.
Hamas is holding back the distribution of one million litres of fuel in the Gaza Strip, a United Nations official said on Monday, joining Israeli claims that the Islamists were stage-managing a crisis. However, the official, who requested anonymity, added that the current quantities of fuel and industrial gasoline stored in Gaza are sufficient for only several days.
Kenya’s president unveiled a power-sharing government on Sunday, with opposition leader Raila Odinga as Prime Minister, aimed at ending a long-running political crisis sparked by contested elections. ”Let us put politics aside and get to work,” President Mwai Kibaki said in a televised speech announcing the Cabinet line-up.
Formerly warring north and south Sudan were at loggerheads on Sunday as the south pulled out of a national census, a cornerstone of their fragile peace agreement, citing a barrage of grievances. ”We have deferred the census until sometime this year,” the information minister in the southern government confirmed.
Former communist rebels in Nepal appear to be on the brink of a historic sweep in elections that will decide the political future of the Himalayan nation and end the rule of its 239-year-old royal dynasty. The Maoists’ party has won 42 seats and is leading in 58 constituencies, the election commission said in a statement on its website.
Developing countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a new global climate-change pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions, according to the United Nations’s top climate official.
Parliamentarians cannot remain silent about Zimbabwe, a case of ”democracy gone wrong”, National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete said in Cape Town on Sunday at the opening of the 118th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) meeting. In his speech, President Thabo Mbeki congratulated the IPU for its stance on gender equality in government.
On the surface, South Africa’s assumption of the presidency of the United Nations Security Council earlier this month has no relevance for the Zimbabwe electoral crisis. Desperate Zimbabweans could call for help from the UN, but this call comes when South Africa is gatekeeper at the Security Council.
Britain has offered to host peace talks on the strife-torn Sudanese region of Darfur under proposals put forward by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his office said on Sunday. Details of the offer were released as activists in 30 countries prepared to hold a global day of action on Sunday to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the conflict.
Haitian lawmakers voted on Saturday to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, hoping to defuse widespread anger over rising food prices that had led to days of deadly protests and looting. President Rene Preval immediately said he would a name a new prime minister.
Kenya President Mwai Kibaki and would-be prime minister Raila Odinga on Saturday reached a coalition government agreement and a new Cabinet will be announced on Sunday, political and diplomatic sources said. The agreement was struck after Kibaki and Odinga held closed-door talks in Sagana State Lodge in central Kenya.
South African President Thabo Mbeki was to hold talks on Saturday with Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe in Harare before heading on to Lusaka for a summit on Zimbabwe’s post-election crisis, an official said. Mugabe has chosen not to attend the gathering of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community.
Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia, has unleashed a storm of recrimination with allegations of a trade in human body parts in Kosovo and Albania after Nato bombed Serbia in 1999. Del Ponte’s claims are based on what she describes as credible reports and witnesses.
The signing of a Ugandan deal to end 20 years of war was postponed in chaos on Friday as government delegates quit, the rebel negotiator resigned and fugitive Joseph Kony failed to show. The planned ceremony on the remote Sudan-Democratic Republic of Congo border seemed delayed for at least days.
Pirates off the coast of Somalia released 30 hostages seized aboard a French yacht a week ago following negotiations that ended the stand-off peacefully, French officials said. The hostages, including 22 French crew aboard Le Ponant, were freed ”without incident”, President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement, without providing details.
Argentine police mobilised on Friday to guard the Olympic torch through Buenos Aires, bracing for protests against the human rights record of Olympic Games host China. The torch arrived in Argentina on Thursday to little fanfare. It will be carried past the country’s pink presidential palace and along the city’s broad avenues.
Gunmen have attacked police from the African Union and United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur for the first time, injuring one officer by beating him with a rifle butt, a UN spokesperson said on Thursday. The unarmed police were stopped at gunpoint as they returned from a routine patrol.