Former Liberian President Charles Taylor ordered his militias to eat the flesh of captured enemies and United Nations soldiers, a former close aide testified on Thursday at Taylor’s war crimes trial. ”He [Taylor] said we should eat them. Even the UN white people — he said we could use them as pork to eat,” said Joseph ”ZigZag” Marzah.
United Nations peacekeeping troops are heading for ”Iraq-style disaster” in Darfur as long as talks between the government and rebel groups remain stalled and the United States maintains its hostile stance, Sudanese officials and regional experts warned on Wednesday.
Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders may soon erase the most potent symbol of the island’s division, by reopening a bullet-pocked crossing between the two sides closed for nearly half a century. Hopes of ending decades of estrangement were revived after last month’s election of Cyprus President Demetris Christofias.
Islamist insurgents cut off the heads of three Somali soldiers south of the capital on Thursday and the United Nations special envoy said he would try to set up peace talks between the opposition and government. It was the first case of beheadings since the government and its Ethiopian military allies ousted the Islamists from power in late 2006.
A witness calling himself Charles Taylor’s death squad commander told a court on Wednesday he killed men, women and babies on the former Liberian leader’s orders and supplied arms to rebels in Sierra Leone. Taylor, once one of Africa’s most feared warlords, faces charges of rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir was due to attend a rescheduled peace accord signing with Chad’s President Idriss Déby Itno on Thursday after failing to show up on Wednesday and telling mediators he had a headache. The mediators hope the non-aggression pact will end years of hostility between Sudan and Chad.
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.
South Africa on Wednesday rejected ”with contempt” claims by jailed British mercenary Simon Mann that it backed his plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. ”South Africa is thrown in just out of the blue … he says he had a nod from us. I would like to know in what sense he had a nod,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said.
As tropical cyclone Jokwe threatened the tourism districts of Vilankulo and Govuro on Wednesday, the government of Inhambane province advised business owners and residents to take precautions. The state broadcaster reported that the owners of tourism establishments near the coast were being encouraged to close their businesses.
The forlorn wrecks of cars and motorbikes dotting southern Sudan’s potholed dirt tracks and rare tarmacadam roads might signal chaos to some. But Zeru Woldemichael sees a business opportunity — in insurance. The Eritrean entrepreneur is hoping to snare a portion of the fledgling insurance market in this semi-autonomous region.
Sudan President Omar al-Bashir on Tuesday raised doubts over a peace deal that Senegal said the leaders of Sudan and Chad are to initial in Dakar on the eve of an Islamic summit. Bashir referred to a Saudi-brokered deal signed in Riyadh in May 2007, when the two leaders made a pilgrimage to Mecca and prayed together inside the Kaaba, the holiest Muslim shrine.
Escalating banditry has forced the World Food Programme (WFP) to halve food deliveries in Darfur, and without immediate cash the United Nations agency will ground its humanitarian flights at the end of the month. So far his year, hijackers have attacked five WFP passenger vehicles and 45 WFP-contracted trucks, the agency said in a statement.
Beijing Olympic organisers on Monday sought to play down security concerns looming over the Games, a day after authorities said two "terrorist" plots from its Muslim-majority north-west had been foiled. "We are confident that we will be able to have a safe Olympics," said Sun Weide, a spokesperson from Beijing’s Olympic Organising Committee.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe has admitted for the first time that famine exists in his country. ”There is hunger in the country and a shortage of food,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mail. Observers say the admission is unprecedented as Mugabe has previously dismissed reports of famine as ”Western propaganda”.
Tropical cyclone Jokwe battered parts of Mozambique for a third day on Monday, killing at least eight people and destroying thousands of homes in the northern Nampula province, Radio Mozambique reported. Four districts were being lashed by heavy downpours and strong winds of up to 200km/h, said the broadcaster.
Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to a state guest house in the former capital on Monday for her second meeting in two days with visiting United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari. UN officials gave no details of Gambari’s planned discussions with the Nobel laureate.
In its half-century history, the European Union has absorbed wave upon wave of immigrants. Now, according to the EU’s two senior foreign policy officials, Europe needs to brace itself for a new wave of migration with a very different cause — global warming.
Tropical cyclone Jokwe lashed northern Mozambique on Sunday, killing at least one person and destroying over 500 homes, a meteorological official said. Mussa Mustafa, head of Mozambique’s National Meteorological Institute, said the cyclone, which swept through part of Madagascar last week, is expected to intensify by Monday.
Senegal wants the international community to guarantee a peace accord between Chad and Sudan to end years of conflict between the two feuding neighbours, President Abdoulaye Wade said. The Senegalese leader will host the signing of a peace pact on Wednesday between Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno and Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir
Suspected ”terrorists” killed in a raid in north-west China’s Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region earlier this year had been planning an attack on the Olympics, a top official said on Sunday. In separate comments, another high-level official from the same region said authorities had on Friday foiled a planned ”terrorist attack” on a passenger jet.
The average cocaine user in Britain probably does not spend too much time thinking about where their drug of choice comes from. If they did, they might reflect on how it travels from South America to the bars, clubs and kitchen tables of the United Kingdom.
Calls to end forced marriage, domestic abuse and job discrimination marked International Women’s Day on Saturday as demonstrators took to the streets worldwide. The issues highlighted crossed a wide spectrum, including abortion rights in Italy, violence against women in Iraq and women hostages in Colombia.
African neighbours Chad and Sudan will sign an agreement to end their long-running conflict in Dakar next week, the Senegalese president said on Friday. "There will be the signing of a general agreement and an implementation agreement" on March 12, President Abdoulaye Wade said.
South Africa, which has one of the world’s highest rates of HIV/Aids, is worried a national programme to fight the disease could founder on a lack of financial resources, it said in a report to the United Nations. President Thabo Mbeki’s government has been criticised for not doing enough to halt the spread of the pandemic.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Canadian jurist Louise Arbour, said on Friday she will step down when her current term in office expires on June 30. ”It is very much for personal reasons. I’m not prepared to make this commitment for another four years,” said Arbour in Geneva.
China has urged Sudan to do more to stop fighting in Darfur and speed up the arrival of more peacekeepers, Beijing’s envoy on the crisis said of Friday, defending his country as a diplomatic bridge to help end the bloodshed. China has faced widespread criticism that it has not used its stakes in Sudan to press for an end to deadly havoc in the Darfur region.
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.
President Robert Mugabe, on the campaign trail ahead of March 29 elections, acknowledged acute shortfalls in local food production and said Zimbabweans were being sent to neighbouring countries to speed up the delivery of imported food, state radio reported on Thursday.
The sun-blasted desert between this small Chadian border town and Sudan’s Darfur is scattered with stunted trees and thorny shrubs. Beneath each one, Sudanese refugees huddle under blankets or sheets tied to branches, desperately seeking shade.
President Mwai Kibaki commemorated on Thursday the 1Â 000 people killed during Kenya’s post-election crisis and urged Parliament to enshrine into law a power-sharing deal intended to keep the peace. Kibaki opened Kenya’s 10th Parliament with a minute’s silence first for two slain legislators then for all the victims of violence.
Sri Lanka was hit by scathing criticism over its human rights record on Thursday, with its government fingered over hundreds of ”disappearances” and an influential panel storming off the island. The move is a major blow to the image of the island’s government, which pulled out of a truce with Tamil Tiger rebels in January.
The Kenyan government sanctioned violence following last December’s disputed presidential elections, the BBC alleged on Wednesday, but Nairobi strongly denied the claims. The BBC quoted sources alleging that meetings were held at the official residence of President Mwai Kibaki between a banned militia group and high-ranking government figures.