| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
Tel: +225 21-73-54 Fax: +225 21-63-35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci
IRIN-WA Update 171 of Events in West Africa, (Saturday-Monday) 21-23 March 1998
SIERRA LEONE: New government
Ten days after his re-instatement marked the end of nine months' junta rule, President Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah formed a new government on Friday, the media reported. As promised he scaled down the number of cabinet ministers, most of them technocrats, from 45 to 15, including nine members of his previous government.
Ambassador to the UN James Jonah heads the combined ministries of Finance, Development and Economic Planning. Hinga Norman, who led the Kamajor militia allied with Kabbah, retains the cabinet post of deputy defence minister, as the ministerial title is to stay with the president. Veteran politician Sama Banya, a former health minister, becomes foreign minister. Allie Bangura, deputy manager of the anti-junta clandestine radio station, was named minister of trade and industry. The new information minister is Julius Spencer, a university lecturer who managed the anti-junta radio station. The ministry of energy, power and works will be headed by Thaimu Bangura, a Kabbah loyalist but also leader of the People's Democratic Party (PDD). The PDD came third in the elections won by Kabbah's People's Party in 1996.
In a radio interview on Sunday, Jonah spoke out against any amnesty for members of the ousted military regime or its allies, as those still at large were continuing their campaign of killing and destruction, the BBC reported.
Commonwealth to assess needs
A high-level Commonwealth mission will visit the country later this month to assess needs for assistance, state radio said on Saturday quoting a presidential statement. The five-member ministerial action group, led by Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, will include his Ghanaian counterpart, Victor Gbeho, Malaysian Prime Ministerial Envoy Tanswe Dadwemusa, British Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd, and Canadian Secretary of State for Latin America and Africa David Gilgo. A two-man advance team, including the Commonwealth's Special Adviser on Political Affairs, Moses Anafo, will visit Freetown this week to prepare for the mission, scheduled for the end of March.
ECOMOG to help restructure army; sends reinforcements
Kabbah has been working closely with the high command of the West African ECOMOG peace-keeping force in Sierra Leone on the restructuring of the new national army, Reuters reported Sunday. The programme will start in the next couple of weeks, Reuters added. The army numbered around 14,000 before the coup which ousted Kabbah in May 1997.
Meanwhile, ECOMOG Commander Major-General Timothy Shelpidi told IRIN that the force was sending reinforcements to the Kenema area near the Liberian border before moving further inland into rebel strongholds. He said members of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and pro-junta Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) militias were "continuing to surrender", but he could not give a specific count.
Newspaper ban
Information Minister Julius Spencer on Saturday ordered 11 newspapers which operated during the nine months of junta rule to stop publication immediately or face disciplinary action, AFP reported. The papers began publishing between June last year and January this year.
LIBERIA: UN arms embargo violated, says ECOMOG chief
The commander of the Nigerian-led ECOMOG peace-keeping force, Major-General Timothy Shelpidi, on Saturday accused the Liberian government of violating a 1991 UN arms embargo on Liberia, AFP and PANA news agencies reported quoting a local radio station. On Monday, Shelpidi reaffirmed to IRIN his view that Liberian President Charles Taylor "has violated the UN arms embargo since his election to office last year, or at the very least did not disarm his fighters as he claimed." He told IRIN he based his views on the fact that since the August 1997 elections, Liberian security forces have been armed with new weapons, mainly AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers (RPGs). Shelpidi called this "a highly dangerous situation" as the security forces were "overarmed" for their assigned tasks and "not properly trained" in handling the weapons. He said he had raised these concerns with the Liberian authorities.
AFP and Reuters added that in a speech to police officers in Monrovia on Friday, President Charles Taylor said the government acknowledged the UN arms embargo and was waiting for it to be lifted. Taylor said the government was responsible for the state's security and "will secure what it requires to protect its sovereignty against internal and external threats". He would not say whether Liberia was importing weapons while the embargo was in force.
Taylor, the former leader of the now defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) faction, has repeatedly been accused of filling the ranks of the various security forces with his former fighters.
NIGERIA: Pope pleads for human rights, prisoners
Pope John Paul II told an estimated two million people at Oba, eastern Nigeria, on Sunday that no groups should be excluded from political life, nor should the weak be intimidated, news media reported. On the second day of his visit, the pontiff said "this moment in Nigeria's history requires concerted and honest efforts to foster harmony and national unity, to guarantee respect for human life and human rights." The BBC described the pope's call as his strongest comments so far on this three-day visit. Many people would see his remarks as direct criticism of the military government's programme for a transition to democracy, the BBC added.
Following a meeting with a group of 34 Muslim spiritual leaders on Saturday, the pontiff said Christianity and Islam both viewed abuses against weaker members of society as a sin, and both stressed human dignity, Reuters reported.
As the pope held closed-doors talks with President Sani Abacha in the capital, Abuja, on Saturday, the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, handed Nigerian Foreign Minister Chief Tom Ikimi a list of around 60 detainees, asking him to consider releasing them. Quoting Vatican spokesman Joachin Nevaldro-Valls, PANA news agency said Ikimi had accepted the list and promised that the matter would be examined critically. The spokesman gave no details of the list. Nigeria's most prominent detainees include former military ruler General Olusegun Obasanjo and Moshood Abiola, who is widely believed to have won the 1993 presidential election. Nevaldro-Valls added it was not the intention of the Holy See to interfere with the country's judicial proceedings, according to PANA. Nigerian officials insist the country has no political detainees, and that those being held have criminal charges to answer.
CAMEROON: Government denies Bakassi attack
The Cameroon government on Saturday denied earlier claims by Nigeria that Cameroonian troops had attacked Nigerian strongholds on the disputed Bakassi peninsula, AFP reported. Speaking on Nigerian state television on Friday, Nigeria's acting Director of Defence Information, Colonel Godwin Ugbo, accused Cameroon of launching a helicopter attack on Thursday, wounding 43. Ugbo described the reaction of the Nigerian troops as "restrained". He also said Cameroon's security forces kept harassing villages in the peninsula, which is located in the oil-rich gulf of Guinea.
Cameroon's Junior Commonwealth Minister, Joseph Dion Ngute, told Cameroon state radio that reports of an attack were "groundless" and a "propaganda" exercise ahead of "the broad offensive Nigeria is about to launch against Cameroon at Bakassi".
The International Court of Justice in The Hague closed its preliminary hearings on the Bakassi dispute earlier this month and will decide the case within the next four months.
GHANA: President Clinton starts African tour
US President Bill Clinton told a cheering crowd of tens of thousands in Accra on Monday that it was time for Africa to become more prominent in the eyes of Americans and the world, AFP reported. Speaking on the first day of a ten-day, six-country African tour, the US President said he was "proud to be the first American president to visit Ghana." Noting that half of the 48 nations in sub-Saharan Africa choose their own governments, he added: "Africans are being stirred by new hopes for peace and democracy and prosperity. Challenges remain but they must be to all of you a call to action, not a cause for despair." President Clinton was to hold talks with his counterpart, Jerry Rawlings, before flying on to Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal.
Ghanaian pressure group Action For Change (AFC) said it warned of serious human rights abuses in Ghana in a petition delivered to the US embassy on Saturday. The group claimed the Ghanaian government had "supervised and inspired persistent and gross human rights violations".
Further power rationing
Energy shortages worsened further on Sunday but were not expected to affect the US President's nine-hour visit, AFP reported. In a move that will double the frequency of black-outs but reduce their duration, authorities decided that from Sunday evening electricity would be available for 12 out of every 24 hours.
Ghana's power shortages are spreading to nearby Benin
and Togo whose respective Prime Ministers, Adrien Houngbedji
and Kwassi Klutse, discussed the situation Friday in
Abidjan with Cote d'Ivoire President Henri Konan Bedie,
the Ivorian media reported. Klutse said Cote d'Ivoire
had promised "to supplement Ghana's efforts to
enable us to meet our entire needs". Ivorian power
experts held talks with counterparts from Benin, Ghana
and Togo in Abidjan over the weekend, Reuters said.
MALI: French NGO suspends operations
French NGO Action Contre la Faim (ACF) said on Friday it was suspending operations in the country following an attack against their office at Gao in Tuareg country, eastern Mali. ACF confirmed to IRIN earlier reports of a "non-violent" night attack by "bandits" last Monday and Tuesday. They tied up two guards and an expatriate nurse and stole valuables. They also took a third guard hostage for a few hours to assist in driving two stolen vehicles. ACF said the suspension was "momentary" and did not involve any staff withdrawal. The NGO would resume operations "as soon as we are reassured that we can work in complete safety". The authorities recognise that despite a 1992 peace accord with Tuareg rebels, a degree of insecurity persists in the area.
Tuareg soldiers desert
Five ex-rebel Tuareg officers and several soldiers recently deserted from the army, AFP reported on Saturday quoting a "reliable" source in Bamako. Ammunition had also been stolen from Gao and according to a local military spokesman, there might be a connection with the deserters. A local independent source told IRIN he agreed with the authorities there was no indication at present that these events heralded a resurgence in rebel activity. They might instead be linked with internal fighting between Tuareg groups over boundary changes in the fertile Tedjeret area, the sources agreed.
NIGER: Amnesty for desert rebels
Niger's National Assembly on Monday voted unanimously in favour of amnesty for Tuareg and Tubu dissident rebels, AFP reported. Dissidents from the Tuareg Union des Forces de la Resistance Armee (UFRA) and the Tubu Forces Armees Revolutionnaires du Sahara (FARS) had taken to the bush again in September 1997 over complaints that the implementation of the April 1995 peace accord was too slow. Under a ceasefire agreed in Algiers two months later, the government had promised the rebels both amnesty and re-integration into regular forces.
Meanwhile, on Monday at Agadez, 750 km north of Niamey,
the heads of two major Tuareg rebel groups, Organisation
de la Resistance Armee (ORA) and Coordination de la
Resistance Armee (CRA), formally handed over all their
weaponry to government forces, AFP added.
CHAD: Seven of eight kidnapped tourists freed
Seven out of eight European tourists were freed by security forces hours after being kidnapped in the northern Tibesti area on Sunday, AFP reported. The government did not specify which of the six French and two Italian tourists was still missing. "Discontented soldiers" were believed responsible, the Chadian information ministry announced on national radio. Late pay is a major cause of troop discontent, according to observers quoted by AFP. Last month, Chadian security forces freed four French hostages held for five days in southern Chad by the rebel Forces Democratiques Unies (FDU).
GUINEA: Two die in clshes
A policeman was lynched and one civilian died on Monday during violent clashes between security forces and residents of a Conakry shanty town, AFP reported. Thousands of residents at Kaporo, north of the Guinean capital, refused to move out so that the area could be cleared and rebuilt. They faced tear gas and rubber bullets for an hour before the 100 policemen retreated. A policeman who lagged behind was lynched by the crowd and a 30-year old male was subsequently shot dead by gendarmes, witnesses told AFP.
Abidjan, 23 March 1998, 17:30 gmt
[ends]
[The material contained in this communication comes to you via IRIN West Africa, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. UN IRIN-WA Tel: +225 21 73 66 Fax: +225 21 63 35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci for more information or subscription. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this report, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. IRIN reports are archived on the Web at: http://www.reliefweb.int/emergenc or can be retrieved automatically by sending e-mail to archive@dha.unon.org . Mailing list: irin-wa-updates]
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 17:38:36 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-West Africa Daily Update 171, 98.3.23 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980323173031.12731A-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
| Previous Menu | Home Page | What's New | Search | Country Specific |