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/ 11 January 2008
Police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi is to be charged with corruption and defeating the course of justice after his application to prevent the National Prosecuting Authority from prosecuting him was denied in the Pretoria High Court on Friday. Judge Nico Coetzee said Selebi’s application bore no merit.
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/ 11 January 2008
Kenya’s opposition said on Friday it planned to restart protests across the East African nation against President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed re-election after the failure of African Union mediation. Kibaki’s government has made clear it will not tolerate opposition marches. Previous protests have led to bloody clashes between opposition supporters and security forces.
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/ 11 January 2008
United States President George Bush arrived in Kuwait on Friday to rally the support of Arab allies against what he calls the Iranian "threat" after making a bold prediction for Middle East peace. Bush flew in aboard <i>Air Force One</i> after his first presidential trip to the Holy Land, where he said he believed a peace treaty would be signed within a year.
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/ 11 January 2008
Tutsi rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Friday rejoined a peace conference aimed at ending long-running conflict in the east, a day after suspending their participation over security concerns. The rebels’ leader, renegade General Laurent Nkunda, told Reuters he was ready if necessary to take part in the meeting.
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/ 11 January 2008
United States President George Bush made his most explicit call for an end to the Israeli occupation after making his first visit to the West Bank on Thursday, where he witnessed Israel’s military checkpoints, the vast West Bank barrier and the spread of Jewish settlements.
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/ 11 January 2008
Japan is to resume its role in the war in Afghanistan after its government on Friday forced through a Bill extending a controversial refuelling mission. The move brought to an end months of political deadlock, and relieved friction with Washington over its commitment to the so-called war on terror.
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/ 10 January 2008
African Union chairperson John Kufuor quit Kenya on Thursday without a deal to end a political crisis that has killed hundreds of people, leaving the president and opposition leader accusing each other of wrecking talks. Controversy over President Mwai Kibaki’s re-election in a December 27 vote triggered bloodletting that displaced 250 000 people.
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/ 10 January 2008
Sudan admitted on Thursday that its troops had opened fire on a joint United Nations/African Union peacekeeping convoy in Darfur, contradicting an earlier denial by its ambassador to the UN. A spokesperson for the Sudanese armed forces said the attack was the result of a ”shared mistake”.
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/ 10 January 2008
Morocco and Western Sahara’s Polisario independence movement ended a third round of talks near New York City on Wednesday without narrowing differences on Africa’s longest-running territorial dispute. But United Nations mediator Peter van Valsum said the sides had agreed to meet again from March 11 to 13 at the same location in the town of Manhasset.
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/ 10 January 2008
Kenya’s carnivorous wildlife — big cats and scavenger mammals and birds — may have made off with and devoured the bodies of human victims of recent post-election violence. ”There are also an unspecified number of uncollected bodies due to accessibility difficulties, and it was feared the bodies may have been consumed by animals and birds of prey,” said the Kenya Red Cross Society.
Sudan on Wednesday strongly denied that its army had opened fire on a United Nations convoy that was attacked in Darfur days after peacekeepers began their new mission to the troubled western Sudanese region. A Sudanese driver was critically injured, a fuel tanker truck destroyed and an armoured personnel carrier damaged late on Monday.
Suspected Islamist rebels killed five soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy east of Algiers on Wednesday, a security source said. The attack occurred near the town of Tizi Ouzou, 120km east of the capital, the source said, without giving further details.
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor funded and armed a rebel leader in neighbouring Sierra Leone, one of his top aides told a United Nations-backed war crimes court on Wednesday. Taylor is on trial for orchestrating rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers during the 1991 to 2002 Sierra Leone civil war.
Scotland Yard strengthened its team aiding the probe into the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Wednesday as concerns for the country’s nuclear security grew. Three more detectives arrived from London, including an expert in the type of explosives used in the gun and suicide-bomb attack that killed Bhutto.
Floods in Southern Africa have displaced thousands of people, drowned livestock and put large numbers of children at risk from serious disease, officials said on Tuesday. About 1,5-million Zambians may have to flee their homes.
African Union chief John Kufuor was due in Nairobi on Tuesday on a crucial mission to broker talks between Kenya’s rival leaders and end the political turmoil that has claimed hundreds of lives. Ahead of Kufuor’s arrival, President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga jousted with various proposals that would allow the two men to sit down together.
Calling for urgent reform of the United Nations, France President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged on Tuesday to help Brazil, Germany, India, Japan and a major African country join the UN Security Council as permanent members. Sarkozy said he had recently told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that "UN reform can’t wait any longer".
A reverend who survived a massacre and was held captive by rebels in Sierra Leone testified on Tuesday in the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor about seeing killings, rapes and mutilations. Taylor is accused of arming, training and controlling the Revolutionary United Front rebels in Sierra Leone.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday his government was committed to finding the truth behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and he vowed to punish her killers. Bhutto, twice Pakistan’s prime minister, was killed in an attack on December 27 as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi.
A blood-diamond expert and an account from a Sierra Leonean miner who said laughing rebels hacked off his hands and burned his family opened the war-crimes trial against Liberia’s Charles Taylor on Monday. The former Liberian president, once one of Africa’s most feared warlords, faces charges of rape, murder, mutilation and recruitment of child soldiers.
Iranian speedboats swarmed three United States navy ships in the strategic Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, radioing a threat to blow them up and prompting a stiff US warning ahead of President George Bush’s trip to the Middle East, Pentagon officials said on Monday.
The United Nations said on Monday it will take urgent measures to help victims of deadly floods in central Mozambique that have driven thousands from their homes. The floods, fed by heavy rains from Zambia and Zimbabwe, have killed six people and cut major transport links to neighbouring countries.
Up to 1Â 000 people may have died in more than a week of riots and post-election violence in Kenya, opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Monday. The head of the African Union, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, is due to land in Nairobi on Tuesday. Odinga said Kufuor could begin chairing talks on Wednesday.
The war-crimes trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor, accused of controlling militia that killed and raped thousands in Sierra Leone, resumed on Monday in The Hague after a six month delay. Taylor was present for the hearing in which the prosecution will call its first witness, an international expert on conflict diamonds.
Kenyans across the political divide prayed for peace on Sunday while aid workers sought to bring relief to nearly 200 000 refugees from post-election violence. ”Our leaders have failed us. They have brought this catastrophe upon us. So now we are turning to the Almighty to save Kenya,” said Jane Riungu, leading her five children to a hilltop church.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday. Musharraf was also quoted as telling the CBS 60 Minutes programme that his government did everything it could to provide security for Bhutto.
A devastating health emergency looms in Kenya where an explosion of post-election violence has killed hundreds and displaced a quarter of a million others, British charity Merlin warned on Sunday. Local aid workers fear an outbreak of diseases in crowded make-shift camps in schools, hospitals and churches, most of which were still out of reach.
Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki said on Saturday he was ready to form a government of national unity to end post-election violence that has killed hundreds of people and forced 250 000 to flee their homes. The development could be a breakthrough after a week-long stalemate between Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Somali gunmen kidnapped two Libyan diplomats in Mogadishu’s busy Bakara market on Saturday, a driver for the two men said. ”Ten men with pistols in their hands surrounded us. They seized the two diplomats and left with the car,” the driver, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisal, said.
President Thabo Mbeki on Friday declined to disclose his views on the legitimacy of Kenya’s presidential elections, saying it was too early to make any pronouncements. ”Its better to see what the outcome of this process is first. We should not take any steps that will make the resolution of the problem difficult,” he said.
United Nations agencies have expressed increasing concern for the plight of up to 250 000 Kenyans displaced by post-election violence, as international diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis continued. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that at least 100 000 people in the northern Rift Valley alone needed immediate help.
President Mwai Kibaki is open to the idea of a coalition government to end Kenya’s post-election crisis but only if the opposition meets his terms, South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said on Friday. ”There is a great deal of hope,” said Tutu, trying to mediate to end turmoil that has killed more than 300 people and threatened one of Africa’s strongest economies.