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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.
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/ 11 September 2007
Norway will reduce its direct aid to Ethiopia by about one-third after Addis Ababa expelled six Norwegian diplomats, Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim said on Tuesday, though he said it was for purely logistical reasons. ”We want to have a good relationship with Ethiopia,” Solheim told foreign correspondents in Oslo.
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/ 11 September 2007
Ongoing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region threatens to undermine planned peace talks between Khartoum and rebel groups, a British minister said as he flew into the war-torn area on Tuesday. British Foreign Office Minister for Africa Mark Malloch Brown made the remarks a day after rebels said government aircraft had bombed a rebel-held Darfur town.
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/ 11 September 2007
Parts of a global nuclear-smuggling ring initiated by the disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb may remain active and nations must do more to crack down on the network, South Africa said on Tuesday. The plea followed last week’s conviction by a South African court of a German engineer for his part in the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan.
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/ 11 September 2007
An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease for which there is no treatment, has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Samples from five people have tested positive for the Ebola virus in the southern province of Kasai Occidental.
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/ 10 September 2007
Sudanese government aircraft bombed a rebel-held town in Darfur on Monday, insurgent groups said, hours after the government said it was investigating a rebel raid on one of its bases last month. Reports of the attack came seven weeks before rebel groups and the Khartoum government are set to meet for peace talks.
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/ 10 September 2007
At least 26 people, many of them civilians, were killed on Monday in two simultaneous suicide attacks in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, a provincial police official said. About 45 people were also wounded in the twin blasts that targeted a group of police in a shopping area of the Girishk district of the province.
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/ 10 September 2007
Despite daunting challenges posed by global warming, water, energy, unemployment and terrorism, the world faces a brighter future with fewer wars, higher life expectancy and improved literacy, according to the 2007 <i>State of the Future</i> report released on Monday. It noted that the number of African conflicts fell from a peak of 16 in 2002 to five in 2005.
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/ 10 September 2007
Uganda’s army denied a report on Monday that its troops were massing on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), despite a deal on the weekend meant to reduce tensions. United Nations-sponsored Radio Okapi in eastern DRC quoted military sources as saying Ugandan soldiers had set up camp at several points along the tense frontier.
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/ 9 September 2007
Sierra Leone counted votes on Sunday from a tense presidential run-off which went peacefully despite fears of violence, but both sides accused the other of fraud and intimidation. Saturday’s presidential run-off vote will pick a successor to President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, who is standing down after two terms.
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/ 9 September 2007
Al-Qaeda’s north Africa wing said it was behind two suicide attacks that killed at least 57 people in Algeria in the past two days, according to a statement posted on the internet on Saturday. It said the al-Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb was behind Saturday’s suicide truck bombing at a coast guard barracks east of Algiers and an attack in the town of Batna less than 48 hours earlier.