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/ 18 September 2007
Russia expressed worry on Tuesday over the possibility of war with Iran as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner pressed for tougher sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov emphasised Russia’s "concern" over "multiple reports that military action against Iran is being seriously considered.
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/ 18 September 2007
Rwanda has made a thinly veiled threat to send its troops back into eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after accusing the government in Kinshasa of collaborating with genocidal Hutu extremists on its border. The Rwandan government said a Congolese army assault against a renegade Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, is helping to strengthen Hutu rebels.
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/ 17 September 2007
A council of peacemaking world leaders and Nobel laureates launched by former South African president Nelson Mandela is taking up Darfur as its first mission, with a trip to Sudan planned later this month, the organisation said on Monday. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who chairs the group known as The Elders, will lead a delegation.
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/ 17 September 2007
France is to invest about €400-million in the next four years to help South Africa with service delivery, job creation and environmental and sustainable development, French ambassador Denis Pietton said on Monday. ”In terms of service delivery, we will help with providing development assistance,” the ambassador said in Pretoria.
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/ 17 September 2007
The humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe has become the world’s worst but is still largely ignored by the international community, a member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said on Monday. David Coltart said the crisis in the former British colony had far outgrown the ability of any single nation to tackle.
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/ 17 September 2007
Everything must be done to avoid the prospect of war with Iran, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Monday, a day after his foreign minister said the country should prepare for that possibility. The United States, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China have backed two rounds of United Nations sanctions against Iran.
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/ 17 September 2007
Ministers from Africa’s Great Lakes region made little headway in two days of talks on security overshadowed by growing violence and mutual mistrust. Foreign and defence ministers from Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appealed for United Nations peacekeepers to intensify efforts to stamp out militias plaguing eastern DRC.
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/ 17 September 2007
Violence is increasing in camps for displaced people in Darfur, where nearly a quarter million people have been displaced so far this year, a United Nations report said on Monday. The United Nations said rising violence in the overcrowded camps of the remote region of western Sudan was making it harder to carry out humanitarian aid work.
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/ 17 September 2007
Somali leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia said they wanted to replace foreign forces backing the interim government against rebels with Arab and African troops under the aegis of the United Nations. The pact came days after a rival meeting in Eritrea by an opposition alliance that included leaders of the Islamic courts movement.
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/ 17 September 2007
Sierra Leone opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma won the West African country’s presidential election after a tense run-off vote marred by some cases of fraud, the National Electoral Commission said on Monday. Koroma, a 53-year-old candidate of the opposition All People’s Congress, was declared the winner with 54,6% of valid votes.
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/ 17 September 2007
The former commander of the failed United Nations peacekeeping force in Rwanda on Sunday warned the newly appointed head of a similar force in Darfur that he faced ”long odds” against success and predicted he would be betrayed by the very officials and governments meant to be backing the mission.
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/ 16 September 2007
Torrential downpours and flash floods across Africa have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools. This summer’s rains have killed more than 150 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and prompted the United Nations to warn of a rising risk of disease outbreaks.
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/ 16 September 2007
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has backed a new Somali opposition alliance, saying arch-foe Ethiopia’s fight against insurgents in Mogadishu was doomed to fail, state media reported on Saturday. The formation of the group, including top Islamist leaders, in Asmara this week has generated yet more friction between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
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/ 16 September 2007
A real and unprecedented opportunity for peace in Darfur is emerging after breakthrough talks between Britain and Khartoum this week, according to the United Kingdom’s key envoy to the region, Mark Malloch Brown. A new optimism is building ahead of next month’s crucial talks between 13 rebel factions and the Sudanese government in Libya.
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/ 15 September 2007
Shanghai, a city which Taiwan has threatened to bombard in the event of conflict, held a major air raid drill on Saturday, a sign that China still views war as possible with the self-ruled island it claims as its own. The drill was scheduled for the same day as a rally in Taiwan where the ruling party aimed to mobilise one million people to support Taiwan’s bid for United Nations membership.
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/ 14 September 2007
Powerful earthquakes struck Indonesia for a third day on Friday, terrorising thousands of people who were refusing to return to coastal homes in fear of tsunami and falling debris. Seismologists warned that the worst may be yet to come. Experts have been predicting a repeat of the monster temblor that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami.
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/ 14 September 2007
The heaviest rainfall in 35 years has displaced about 150Â 000 people in eastern Uganda since August and the rain has been ”worsening by the hour”, authorities said on Friday. Flooding across much of West and Central Africa has killed at least 75 people and threaten about a half million, United Nations officials say.
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/ 14 September 2007
Soldiers in the Central African Republic (CAR) have massacred hundreds of people and burned villages, forcing civilians to flee, during a counter-insurgency campaign, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday. The watchdog group blamed President Francois Bozize’s elite guard for atrocities carried out since mid-2005.
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/ 14 September 2007
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Friday that his government would observe a ceasefire in Darfur after peace talks start next month, on a visit to Rome that has drawn criticism in Italy and abroad. He urged Europe to pressure rebel leaders to attend talks with Khartoum due to start on October 27 in Libya.
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/ 14 September 2007
At least fifty-six people have died while trying to make the perilous Gulf of Aden crossing from Somalia to Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. A UN spokesperson told journalists that a dozen boats carrying 925 Somalis, Ethiopians and others fleeing growing violence and insecurity in the region had arrived in Yemen since September 3.
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/ 13 September 2007
Three mass graves have been uncovered in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where a renegade general, government forces and rebel groups have clashed for weeks, a United Nations mission said on Thursday. ”We do not know the exact number of victims but there are several in each of the graves,” Sylvie van den Wildenberg, a spokesperson, said.
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/ 13 September 2007
South Africa is using its seat on the United Nations Security Council to push for troops from a hybrid UN/African Union peacekeeping force to be on the ground in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur by next month. South Africa will use its position at the UN to ”insist” on some troops being deployed by October.
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/ 13 September 2007
President Thabo Mbeki will lead the South African delegation to the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, which starts in New York next week, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Thursday Speaking in Pretoria, ambassador George Nene, head of the multilateral section in the department, said several issues would be discussed.
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/ 13 September 2007
Somalia’s government on Thursday said a new opposition movement vowing war on Ethiopian troops in the Horn of Africa nation was a ”terrorist alliance” posing no real threat. Somali opposition figures forged the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia on Wednesday in a move analysts said may boost Islamist-led insurgents fighting the interim government.
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/ 13 September 2007
Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy were expected to form the perfect couple — a pair of like-minded conservative leaders who would work hand in hand to heal Europe after its Iraq divisions and failed constitution. From his first day in office the Frenchman’s bullish diplomacy has grated on his German partners.
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/ 13 September 2007
Ethiopian rebels on Thursday urged the world to bring an end to an army crackdown in the restive Ogaden region, warning that another ”African genocide” was unfolding. The Ogaden National Liberation Front said thousands of displaced civilians had fled to neighbouring Somalia without food and medicine over the past four months.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali opposition figures meeting in Eritrea united to form a new ”liberation” movement on Wednesday to seek a military or diplomatic solution to conflict in their homeland, a spokesperson said. The main aim of the organisation, called the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia, is to secure the exit of Ethiopian troops who are backing the interim government in Somalia.
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/ 12 September 2007
Iran will not stop uranium enrichment, chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said on Wednesday, despite a call by the European Union and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to halt sensitive nuclear work. ”We heard about this EU demand and we said our view,” Larijani told a news conference.
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/ 12 September 2007
The hole in the protective ozone layer over the Antarctic is forming again, but should remain just below the record size it reached last year, a scientist at the United Nations’s weather agency said Wednesday. The gap in the ozone in the upper atmosphere, at altitudes of up to 25km, has reached a size of about 23-million square kilometres.
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/ 12 September 2007
A senior Darfur rebel leader accused the Sudanese government on Wednesday of trying to grab land ahead of October peace talks, and threatened to pull out of the talks unless attacks stopped. Justice and Equality Movement leader Khalil Ibrahim said the violence in the remote west would make it impossible for him to travel to negotiations with Khartoum.
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/ 12 September 2007
A tropical sun rises over Havana and in the neighbourhood of Vedado, a maze of worn, bleached apartment blocks, a unique healthcare system limbers up for another day. In Parque Aguirre, a small plaza shaded by palms, two dozen pensioners form a semi-circle and perform a series of stretches and gentle exercises, responding to the commands of a spry septuagenarian.
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/ 11 September 2007
Eritrea said on Tuesday it will take every precaution to avoid war with arch-foe Ethiopia over their disputed border, but demanded Addis Ababa comply with a five-year-old boundary ruling. Ties between the Horn of Africa neighbours are at their lowest since a 1998 to 2000 war that killed 70 000 people, analysts say.