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.
China has cracked a terrorist group plotting to kidnap foreigners during the Beijing Olympics, police said on Thursday. The announcement follows the revelation of two other terror plots last month, but there has been scepticism over whether Beijing is inflating a terror threat to justify tighter control on dissent ahead of the Olympics.
Israel warned on Thursday it will retaliate against Hamas, blaming the Palestinian Islamist group for a deadly explosion of violence in the Gaza Strip that followed a month of relative calm. Israeli authorities said they temporarily shut down the Nahal Oz fuel terminal following Wednesday’s attack.
A new war could break out between Eritrea and Ethiopia if the United Nations peacekeeping mission that has been prevented from patrolling both sides of the border withdraws entirely, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned on Wednesday. The two neighbours have been feuding over their border since Eritrea gained independence in 1993.
Uganda’s top rebel leader, Joseph Kony, was expected to sign an historic peace deal on Thursday to end one of Africa’s longest and most brutal civil conflicts. The Lord’s Resistance Army chief was due in the southern Sudan jungle town of Ri-Kwangba to initial an agreement that is to be signed separately by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four days later.
South Africa should use its powerful position on the United Nations Security Council to put the Zimbabwean election saga on the international body’s agenda, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said on Wednesday. Zille, who is currently in New York, said in a statement she would meet South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Thousands of rebels massed in Sudan are about to attack neighbouring Chad in an attempt to destabilise it, Chad’s defence minister said on Wednesday. ”Once again the regime of [Sudanese President] Omar al-Bashir … is massing, training and heavily arming thousands of its mercenaries,” said Defence Minister Mahamat Ali Abdallah.
Kenyan leaders were on Wednesday under pressure to resume talks on forming a coalition government in a bid to end a devastating political crisis, a day after hundreds demonstrated to demand a new Cabinet. The much-delayed unveiling of a national-unity government is a key step in implementing a power-sharing deal aimed at quelling deadly violence.
Rising food prices could spark worldwide unrest and threaten political stability, the United Nations’s top humanitarian official warned on Tuesday after two days of rioting in Egypt over the doubling of prices of basic foods in a year and protests in other parts of the world.
Two staff members of the United Nations refugee agency narrowly escaped an ambush on their vehicle by armed militiamen in Somalia’s northern breakaway region of Puntland, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday. The vehicle was carrying a foreign aid worker and a local driver.
The United Nations refugee agency on Tuesday unveiled a new partnership with internet giant Google to help track refugees from Iraq to Darfur and raise public awareness of its work. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched its new service using the ”Google Earth Outreach” programme.