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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 28-02-2002

PART #2/4 - From CONGO RDC  to  KENYA

* Congo (RDC). Goma: One month on — Omar Suleiman sits on the balcony of the Lumamba hotel, watching the cars drive down Goma’s main street. Each vehicle churns up a thick cloud of brown dust which shimmers in the heat haze that still envelops the centre of this ravaged town. The hotel balcony used to be on the first floor. Today it is the new ground floor. The rest of the building, and the entire neighbourhood, lie submerged beneath a sea of lava. The main street is nothing more than a groove in the lava, smoothed by a bulldozer. Black waves, now rock hard, seem to lap against the balcony railings where Omar and his family sit and ponder their future. «Everything is destroyed,» says Omar, the hotel’s manager, showing me the incinerated beds and mattresses inside. Lava has even forced its way through the pipes into the upstairs toilets. One month after Mount Nyiragongo exploded, the lava field in Goma has stopped moving, but the crust is still warm to the touch. Young boys in thin plastic sandals run across the hottest patches pushing the cheapest form of local transport —home-made wooden bicycles — piled high with vegetables. Every few metres, sulphurous smoke seeps from cracks in the lava. Push a stick into the hole and, within seconds, it will catch fire. «This must be the most hazardous place in the world,» says Professor Dario Tedesco, an Italian vulcanologist brought in by the United Nations to monitor the volcano and other seismic activity. Mr Tedesco says the earth tremors have moved from Mount Nyiragongo, down towards Goma itself and on under Lake Kivu. He is worried that the lava in town is taking so long to cool — a sign perhaps of new volcanic activity under Goma. As for the lake, «it could be a major tragedy,» he says. Over the centuries, huge quantities of poisonous gases have built up on the lake floor. Increased seismic activity has already pushed the lake floor down by half a metre this year alone. The danger is that the gas will be destabilised, and forced to the surface. (BBC News, UK, 26 February 2002)

* Congo (RDC). Dialogue intercongolais — 25 février. C’est avec plusieurs heures de retard sur l’horaire prévu que s’est ouvert, lundi soir à Sun City (Afrique du Sud), le dialogue intercongolais, prescrit par l’accord de Lusaka de 1999 et qui doit jeter les bases de la paix au Congo. Le président sud-africain Thabo Mbeki a jeté tout son poids dans la balance pour que l’ouverture se tienne le jour prévu, même si c’était devant une assistance incomplète. Reste toujours en cause la question de la composition de la délégation de l’opposition politique, dont on demande le retrait des partis favorables au président Kabila. Jean-Pierre Bemba (MLC) était à Sun City, mais n’a pas participé à la cérémonie d’ouverture. Par contre, le président Joseph Kabila et Adolphe Onusumba (RCD-Goma) y étaient présents. Notons encore la présence de représentants religieux (catholiques, protestants, kimbanguistes et musulmans) au sein des  délégués de la société civile. Le cardinal Etsou, archevêque de Kinshasa, a présidé la prière avant le discours d’ouverture. Durant le dialogue, les quelque 300 délégués auront pour mission de mettre en place un projet de constitution et de nouvelles institutions afin d’aboutir à des élections démocratiques. Il leur faudra aussi repenser une nouvelle armée, et se pencher sur des questions majeures comme celle de la nationalité. Le dialogue ne peut en principe dépasser les 45 jours, mais pourrait pourtant se prolonger au-delà. - 26 février. Les pourparlers ont été repoussés d’au moins 24 heures pour régler les problèmes de représentation. Cependant, des négociations ont eu lieu entre les trois belligérants (MM. Kabila, Bemba et Onusumba) en présence de diverses personnalités. - 27 février. Les négociations ont été rompues, mais une nouvelle réunion devait s’ouvrir dans la soirée. D’autre part, un nouveau point de friction est apparu: les divers camps dénoncent de violents combats dans le Nord-Katanga (entre Muliro et Moba), se rejetant la faute. La Monuc, qui a une représentation à Moba, n’a pas encore désigné de coupable. (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 27 février 2002)

* Congo (RDC). Inter-Congolese Dialogue — 24 February: Congo’s government accuses rebels and their Rwandan backers of breaking a year-old ceasefire. They say more than three battalions launched an unsuccessful attack on the government-held town of Moliro on 22 February.There is no independent confirmation of the fighting, and the leader of the rebels has denied the incident. 25 February: Representatives of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s warring factions are due to meet in Sun City, South Africa for a new effort to bring their country out of four years of civil war. They will try to agree on a transitional government under which elections will be held. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, has urged a Congolese rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, not to carry out his threat to boycott the meeting. Mr Bemba has complained that some parties attending as opposition groups are in fact fronts for the Kinshasa government. 25 February: The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, urges warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo to set aside their differences. «We Africans have to show the world our capacity to solve our problems by peaceful means,» he says in his opening address at peace talks in South Africa. President Joseph Kabila is taking part but one of the main rebel leaders, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has so far refused to attend. The talks are aimed at ending more than three years of civil war in Congo. In the opening ceremony, African leaders implore the Congolese to make peace so that their country could, in President Mbeki’s words, become an African giant. But the ceremony is delayed by several hours because of disputes over who should attend. Many exiles try to enter the auditorium and scuffles break out with police. Up until the  last minute, it is not clear whether President Kabila and others will attend. Mr Kabila eventually takes his seat, but Mr Bemba’s place is conspicuously empty. The draft agenda is as follows: 1) Validation of delegates’ mandates. 2) Formal adoption of the Rules of Procedure. 3) Adoption of the Agenda. 4) General Statements. 5) End of the war. 6) Congo’s new political dispensation. 7) The new Congolese army. 8) Reconstruction. 9) Urgent basic economic and social programme. 10) National Reconciliation. 11) Guarantees for a successful ending. 12) Elections and Electoral issues. 13) Adoption of Resolutions. 14) Closing Speeches. 15) Signing of the final document. 26 February: The peace talks are postponed for at least a day to sort out problems of representation by opposition political parties, officials said. «We have been told that talks are postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday) and maybe longer,» a spokesman for one of the rebel groups, RCD-Goma, said. The delay came hours after Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila held private talks with the two main rebel leaders late Monday. Officials said the talks were cordial, but gave no further details. 27 February: Representatives of the government, the UN mission in Congo, and the two main rebel groups, including Bemba’s MLC group meet in the morning. Some media houses have withdrawn their coverage of the Talks, preferring to wait until the actual talks resume. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 28 February 2002)

* Côte d’Ivoire/UE. Reprise totale de la coopération — Le 21 février, l’Union européenne a décidé de rétablir entièrement sa coopération avec la Côte d’Ivoire, a-t-on appris de source officielle à Bruxelles. Cette décision, indique l’UE, permettra de commencer la programmation des ressources disponibles pour la Côte d’Ivoire dans le cadre du 9e Fonds européen de développement (FED), instrument financier qui lie les Quinze aux 77 pays ACP. L’UE a prévu une enveloppe de 264 millions d’euros d’aide financière directe à la Côte d’Ivoire pour la période 2002-2007, à laquelle s’ajoutera les reliquats des FED précédents d’un montant de 40 millions. Toutefois, la totalité de ces fonds ne sera débloquée que “si le processus d’ouverture politique se poursuit”, indique l’UE. L’UE avait gelé la coopération avec la Côte d’Ivoire après le coup d’Etat de décembre 1999. (PANA, Sénégal, 21 février 2002)

* Egypt. Rail crash families infuriated — 21 February: Egyptian riot police guard the mortuary in Cairo as relatives arrive for the mostly hopeless task of trying to identify victims of the country’s worst rail disaster. More than 370 people died in a fire that swept through seven carriages of an overcrowded third-class train on 20 February. Relatives complain that, because the victims are poor, the government will not spend money on modern technology to identify the remains. «The  authorities should use DNA and other advanced tests,» says Ahmed Ali, who is looking for his brother. A woman dressed in the traditional garb of southern Egypt, where most of the victims came from, says she knew her husband was on the train, but cannot not identify the body. «How am I going to prove he is dead?» she weeps. Families say that without official death certificates they will not be able claim pensions or the compensation promised by the government. 22 February: Egypt’s Transport Minister and its head of railways have resigned in the wake of the disaster. 24 February: A mass funeral has been held for more than 100 unidentified victims of the train fire which killed 373 people. Police stood guard at the cemetery walls, fearing overcrowding by mourners, as Egypt’s top Islamic cleric Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi led the prayers beside 14 large graves in central Cairo. The bodies, which had been burned beyond recognition, will be put in so-called martyr’s graves, reserved for unidentified victims of wars and disasters. The burial had been due on 23 February, but was postponed to allow relatives more time to identify victims. Local media reports say an electrical short-circuit is now thought to be the main cause of the fire, Egypt’s worst train disaster. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 25 February 2002)

* Egypt. Brides killed in building collapse — Twenty-two people, including many brides, were crushed to death when a building collapsed in the Egyptian city of Damietta. The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the four-storey building on 26 February. Another 25 people were injured, officials said. Many of the dead and injured were brides and attendants preparing for weddings at a beauty salon in the building, family members and witnesses said. A mother of one of the victims screamed wildly and beat her fists on the door of an ambulance covered with flowers carrying the coffin holding her daughter — 17-year-old Basma el-Assany. «She was an angel, she prayed all the time, she used to kiss me all the time. Who is going to kiss me now?» said the distraught mother, outside a mosque where four coffins had been taken. Anti-riot police surrounded the half-collapsed building with only rescue workers and building residents allowed into the area. It was unclear how many people were in the building or what caused its collapse. Residents had abandoned the building days earlier fearing it would collapse. Authorities had marked the building, which overlooks the River Nile, for demolition two years ago. (CNN, USA, 27 February 2002)

* Erythrée/Ethiopie. Processus de paix — Une délégation du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies, forte de 15 membres et dirigée par l’ambassadeur norvégien Ole Peter Koiby, était attendue le 21 février au soir à Addis Abeba, où elle débute une tournée de travail devant la mener ensuite à Asmara, afin de discuter du processus de paix entre l’Ethiopie et l’Erythrée, indique l’agence PANA. Selon M. Koiby,  la mission va souligner l’engagement de la communauté internationale au processus de paix et examiner les mesures à prendre, notamment dans les actions de déminage et la démarcation physique de la frontière. La délimitation de la frontière entre les deux pays a été en effet retardée d’un mois pour des raisons techniques. Un rapport de l’Onu note que des milliers de mines restent éparpillées dans les champs éthiopiens, empêchant ainsi le démarrage du programme de développement et de redressement destiné aux agriculteurs. Plus de 300.000 Ethiopiens des zones rurales avaient abandonné leurs maisons après le début de la guerre en 1998, et l’on craint de plus en plus que si les mines ne sont pas enlevées avant le lancement de la principale campagne agricole, les agriculteurs restent dépendants de l’assistance alimentaire. - Le 25 février, la délégation est retournée à New York. M. Koiby s’est félicité “qu’un compromis (...) est sur le point d’être obtenu”. Mais selon l’agence Misna, au-delà des phrases de circonstance, la question est loin d’être résolue: le processus de paix n’a pas fait de progrès substantiels et le dialogue peine sur le thème des revendications territoriales réciproques. (PANA, Sénégal, 21-25 février 2002)

* Eritrea/Ethiopia. Security Council heads to the Horn — 21 February: The UN Security Council is expected to arrive in Addis Ababa this evening in an attempt to calm rising tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are emerging from a bitter two and half year border conflict. The 15 member council, led by Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, will be visiting the two neighbours to address the ongoing peace process between the two neighbours, on the eve of a ruling on where the official border lies, which is due at the end of March. The disputed 900 kilometre border was the source of the Ethio-Eritrea conflict in May 1998 in which tens of thousands lost their lives in fighting and more than one million were displaced from their homes. Although Ethiopia and Eritrea signed the OAU brokered Algiers peace agreement in December 2000, suspicion and mistrust still dominate the political agendas of both governments. 22 February: Members of the United Nations Security Council spend more than an hour with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. They assure him of the UN‘s willingness to continue to support the peace process. And they tell him they intended to extend by another six months the mandate of the UN peacekeeping force sent in after the bitter war fought between 1998 and 2000. Most of the time the Security Council sits in New York making decisions that affect the lives of people on the other side of the world. But just occasionally its members travel to see for themselves the places they are discussing and to meet the people their decisions affect. 24 February: United Nations Security Council envoys have ended their visit to the Horn of Africa in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. The  Security Council members received a noticeably warmer welcome in Eritrea than they had on the Ethiopian side of the border. More senior figures were involved in the meetings and during their visits to the Eritrean border areas crowds were mobilised to welcome them. When they met Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki, he greeted them with cordial handshakes and emerged at the end of the meeting smiling, unlike his Ethiopian counterpart. But although the Security Council members say they have got what they came for — a clear commitment by both leaders that they will respect the boundary commission’s decision — the assurances on both sides of the border were hedged with conditions. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 25 February 2002)

* Ethiopia/Eritrea. Religions build reconciliation — «Meetings between Ethiopian and Eritrean religious leaders are important for promoting reconciliation among the two countries", Fides was told by the Papal Representative Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Nuncio to Ethiopia and Eritrea. He was commenting an ecumenical interreligious exchange of visits and prayers between representatives of Muslims and Christians, (Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants) of both countries. As an act of peace, on February 13 an Ethiopian delegation of religious leaders visited Asmara and on February 14 an Eritrean religious delegation made a return visit to Addis Ababa. The leaders were joined by thousands of faithful for peace prayer services, the Christians in church and the Muslims at the mosque. Archbishop Tomasi says the meetings «show that religions have a leading role to play in promoting reconciliation among the two countries, divided by a bloody war over borders from 1998 to 2000» (Fides, Vatican City, 21 February 2002)

* Ethiopie/Erythré. Les religieux pour la paix — «La rencontre des chefs religieux d’Ethiopie et d’Erythrée est un pas très important pour la réconciliation entre les deux pays», a déclaré à Fides Mgr Silvano M. Tomasi, nonce apostolique en Ethiopie et en Erythrée, à propos de la visite en Erythrée, le 13 février, des représentants religieux éthiopiens (orthodoxes, catholiques, protestants et musulmans). Le 14 février, les chefs religieux érythréens ont rendu la visite en allant à Addis-Abeba. Mgr Tomasi considère que les rencontres entre les dirigeants religieux ont non seulement une grande valeur symbolique, mais «montrent que les Eglises et les groupes religieux veulent avoir un rôle d’avant-garde pour la réconciliation entre les deux pays», divisés par un conflit sanglant, pour une dispute de frontières qui a duré de 1998 à 2000. Les rencontres entre les chefs religieux d’Ethiopie et d’Erythrée ont été préparées par l’oeuvre norvégienne “Church Aid” qui a organisé 6 réunions entre 1998 et 2001: 3 à Oslo, une à Francfort, une à New York, une à Nairobi. (Fides, Cité du Vatican, 21 février 2002)

* Ethiopia. Somali region sacks officials — The government of Ethiopia’s Somali region has  sacked seven of its top officials on charges of corruption. The decision was taken by an executive meeting of the governing Democratic Peoples Party. The seven ministers, which include the vice president Adam Abdulahi, were suspended last month after being accused of self-interest and nepotism. The authorities are to convene a special regional congress to discuss the issue. (BBC News, UK, 27 February 2002)

* Ghana. Cacao: augmentation du prix à la production — Au Ghana, depuis le 22 février, est entré en vigueur une augmentation de 41% du prix à la production du cacao, la plus grande source de recettes d’exportation du pays. Dans sa présentation du budget au Parlement à Accra, le ministre des Finances, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, a annoncé que le cacao rapporterait désormais 6,2 millions de cédis (environ 815 dollars) la tonne, contre 4,384 millions de cédis auparavant. (PANA, Sénégal, 24 février 2002)

* Guinée/Liberia/Sierra Leone. Sommet au Maroc — Les 26 et 27 février à Rabat, les présidents de la Sierra Leone, du Liberia et de la Guinée ont participé à un sommet sur la paix, organisé à l’initiative du Maroc. Les trois chefs d’Etat s’accusent mutuellement de soutenir les mouvements rebelles qui sévissent dans leur pays respectif. La rencontre intervient alors que le Liberia connaît depuis plusieurs semaines une flambée de violence alimentée par les rebelles du LURD (Libériens unis pour la réconciliation et la démocratie) que le président Taylor accuse d’être soutenus par la Guinée. Taylor à son tour est accusé d’avoir soutenu en Sierra Leone les rebelles du Front révolutionnaire uni (RUF) pour profiter du trafic régional de diamants. - Le 27 février, le sommet de Rabat s’est achevé par une déclaration commune, qui se limite à une déclaration de bonnes intentions. Les trois chefs d’Etat ont réaffirmé la nécessité de “la sécurité totale le long de leurs frontières communes, le rapatriement des réfugiés et l’asssistance aux personnes déplacées, et la réactivation du secrétariat de l’Union du fleuve Mano”. Ils ont aussi “expressément condamné les activités des groupes armés non gouvernementaux dans leur région”. (AP, 26-27 février 2002)

* Kenya. Halting land allocation — Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi has frozen the allocation of publicly-owned land to private individuals or businesses, in an effort to end illegal land grabbing. A decision to resume the programme will be taken after a land commission set up three years ago submits its final report, probably in October. The president acknowledged that current practices had resulted in grave irregularities and raised serious concerns. President Moi said the situation had led to the serious depletion of forests, wildlife corridors and amenity land. Correspondents say members of the government have been regularly accused of giving government land to party supporters and sympathizers. Town and city councillors  throughout the country are also regularly accused of grabbing public land to sell for profit. The 78-year-old president, who has been in power for 23 years, said in some instances land had been allocated illegally. The commission of inquiry into the land law system which he appointed in November 1999 was, among other things, given the task of undertaking a broad view of land issues in the country and recommending the main principles of land policy framework. (BBC News, UK, 21 February 2002)

* Kenya. Regional Conference on Street Children — The Civil Society Forum for East and Southern Africa on Promoting and Protecting the Rights of Street Children, was held in Nairobi from 11-13 February. The conference was jointly organised by the British Consortium for Street Children, and Street Child Africa, as well as Kenya’s Undugu Society of Kenya, founded by the late Father Arnold Grol, Missionary of Africa, a pioneer in the work with street children in Nairobi. Participants listed poverty, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the high cost of education as the main causes for the increasing number of street children all over the continent. They pledged to lobby their national governments and international organisations, ahead of the Special UN Session on the Rights of the Child, in May this year, to adopt measures to improve the life of street children. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 24 April 2002)

* Kenya. Controversial sale of Seed Company shares — The Kenya Seed Company has concluded a controversial sale of 3.36 million shares of the parastatal to selected private investors for $1.7 million, despite the rejection of the deal by the government. At stake is the country’s food security, since seed multiplication is a strategic exercise which the government is not ready to hand over entirely to the private sector. The private placement will see the government ownership through the Agricultural Development Corporation fall from 53% to about 40% as private interests gain control at 50.6%. (The East African, Kenya, 18-24 February 2002)

* Kenya. Policeman victim of crime wave — Kenyan police are investigating the killing of one of the country’s most senior officers, Njiru Kianda, in a shooting in Nairobi early on the morning of 25 February. Mr Kianda, who was a senior deputy police commissioner, was attacked by a group of gunmen as he sat in his car after dropping a colleague off at his home. A police spokesman says: «A few people have been detained in connection with the murder but none has yet been charged». Just two weeks ago, another senior police officer was killed in Nairobi. Correspondents say the murder of Kenya’s third most senior police officer will increase Nairobi residents’ security concerns. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 25 February 2002)