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IRIN-WA Update 324 of Events in West Africa (Saturday - Monday) 24 - 26 October 1998
GUINEA BISSAU: President and rebel leader to meet tomorrow
Guinea Bissau's rebel leader, Ansumane Mane, who controls most of the country in the civil war, agreed to direct talks with besieged President Joao Bernardo Vieira, news organisations reported. The talks arranged at the weekend following talks with Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama are scheduled on Tuesday morning in the capital, Bissau. Another meeting of government and rebel military chiefs will follow in the afternoon, the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, reported.
Rebel spokesman Major Zamora Induta announced the impending meetings on Bissau's rebel Radio Bombolom on Sunday. These developments follow Mane's 48-hour truce declared on Friday. This truce came close on the heels of a unilateral ceasefire declared by Vieira on Wednesday and his call for direct talks with Mane.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama, who arrived in Bissau's Bissalanca airport on Saturday, engaged in shuttle diplomacy to try and persuade the belligerents to end four months of fighting. Reuters said it was the first time the airport, controlled by the rebels, had been used since the fighting started on 7 June.
According to the Portuguese daily, 'Diario de Noticias', Senegalese Interior Minister Lamine Cisse also arrived in Guinea Bissau on Saturday and met Vieira and Mane. The newspaper said Cisse was bearing a personal message from Senegalese President Abdou Diouf to both leaders.
Media reports said that in their scheduled meeting, Mane would want Vieira to clarify his position on the continued support of some 3,000 Senegalese troops in Bissau. The rebels would also want to hear Vieira's plans for political reform, Reuters said.
Ceasefire holds
The guns remained silent in Bissau on Saturday after the ceasefire declared by the rebels, AFP reported.
However, the missionary news agency, MISNA, said there was still fighting on Sunday on the road linking Bissau to the rebel-controlled Bra barracks, in the city's northern suburbs.
On Friday, Mane's forces controlled all towns in the
interior, AFP reported quoting a diplomat. Mane's forces
control Gabu, some 170 km northeast of Bissau, near
the border with Guinea and the strategic town of Bafata,
the country's second largest town, about 48 km southwest
of Gabu.
WFP to deliver food for 80,000
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Monday three trucks carrying 30 mt of emergency food aid had left Bissau for the towns of Prabis and Cumura, where some 80,000 people have been trapped by last week's fighting.
The agency's Abidjan office said that this was WFP's first emergency delivery in Guinea Bissau since it pulled out its staff from the country last week. It said, with the current ceasefire at hand, it planned to deliver an additional 270 mt of rice over the next few days, enough to feed 80,000 people for one week.
"We are urgently delivering this food ," Hiro Matsumura, the WFP Representative in Guinea Bissau, said.
Matsumura said that most people who fled to Prabis and Cumura, some 20 km from Bissau, had left all their belongings behind and could not afford the transport to safer places.
The agency said that some of the internally displaced people had been wounded during heavy artillery exchanges as they tried to cross the frontline to safety. They were living in makeshift camps with no food or safe water to drink.
Thousands of Guinea Bissau refugees flee to neighbouring Guinea
Some 3,165 people fleeing fighting in Guinea Bissau have crossed into northwest Guinea recently, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Monday.
An official of the UNHCR in Abidjan said the refugees, among them Guinean (Conakry) citizens, had arrived in the Guinean town of Koumbia, near Gaoual, 350 km northwest of Conakry, the Guinean capital. They were fleeing last week's fighting between government and rebel troops in several Guinea Bissau towns, especially Bafata and Gabu.
The official said the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies had provided initial aid consisting of 80 tents and food. Some 80 people, 75 of whom Guinea Bissau nationals, arrived in Conakry by boat on 21 October, the official said.
Humanitarian agencies and the Guinean government, which until recently had troops in Guinea Bissau, are evaluating the kind of aid they can give the refugees.
NIGERIA: Ijaw youths step up attacks in southwest
Youths belonging to the Ijaw ethnic group in the oil-rich Delta area in southwest Nigeria stepped up attacks against the Itsekiris, a rival group, raiding their ancestral home, kidnapping and seizing residents, media agencies reported at the weekend.
Ode-Itsekiri, the traditional birthplace of the Itsekiri people and home to 5,000 people, was razed in a pre-dawn attack on Saturday by heavily armed Ijaw youths. The youths battled briefly with soldiers posted in the village before forcing them to flee. The news agency, AFP, quoted witnesses as saying that a gang of youths had set fire to several houses, including the palace of the Itsekiri traditional ruler. The youths took several hostages before leaving.
Meanwhile on Sunday, Ijaw youths raided police stations at Burutu and Bomadi, near the town of Warri, 300 km west of Lagos, making off with arms and ammunition.
Patrick Fregene, an Itsekiri leader, quoted by AFP, said the attacks were "a well coordinated and executed war based on an act of rebellion" against the government. He also called for the dawn-to-dusk curfew declared last week Thursday to be properly enforced and extended to more Ijaw areas. The curfew was imposed after attacks on Itsekiri homes by Ijaw youths.
The Nigerian army was sent to the area to quell the fighting. Soldiers are currently guarding oil facilities, including the state-owned refinery and the offices of multinationals, and patrolling the major streets.
Reuters reported that at least seven people had been killed and 85 houses burned down.
Talks called to end clashes
On Sunday, the military administrator of Delta State, Walter Feghabor, summoned the leaders of the Ijaws and Itsekiris to engage in talks to end the crisis, Reuters reported, quoting state radio. No further details were made available on the venue and the representation at the meeting.
The clashes between the two communities broke out last year over the relocation of a local council government from an Ijaw to Itsekiri area. The Ijaws are the largest and poorest of the communities in the Delta and have been demanding better amenities and a greater say in government.
Ijaw militants have closed several oil facilities in the region over the past three weeks, cutting Nigeria's oil exports per day by about a third, Reuters said. Oil accounts for more than 90 percent of Nigeria's export income.
Foreign companies pull out staff
Several foreign companies pulled out non-essential staff from Warri on Friday as a precaution after violent clashes last week, AFP reported, quoting diplomatic sources. It said the companies were "getting their people out, dependants and non-essentials", but declined to identify which or how many companies were involved. He added that French, British, US and Canadian firms were involved.
Pipeline fire put out, another act of sabotage reported
The Nigerian pipeline fire was finally extinguished on Friday, nearly one week after it erupted killing more than 700 people near the oil town of Warri, news agencies reported. The fire broke out on 18 October, when a spark ignited spilled fuel from a leak in the pipeline engulfing some 2,000 people who were scavenging petrol.
Meanwhile, the military administrator of Edo State, Anthony Onyearugubulem, condemned "saboteurs" who had tampered yet again with another fuel pipeline in the area last week Thursday, AFP reported. He said the army had moved security personnel in to guard the area and clean up the "major spillage".
Red Cross tells fire victims to return to hospital
The Nigerian Red Cross has been touring villages in and around Warri in an attempt to persuade victims who were burned in the pipeline blaze to return to hospital, the BBC reported on Sunday. Many of the victims discharged themselves from hospital for fear they would be arrested for causing the fire. The BBC said some of the worst-affected victims have received no treatment because of a shortage of medical staff.
Nigerian military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, had blamed the incident on saboteurs when he visited the disaster site last week.
SIERRA LEONE: Death penalty for rebel leader
Sierra Leoneans in the capital, Freetown, enthusiastically greeted news on Friday that a high court had sentenced the leader of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) to death, humanitarian sources told IRIN today.
One source said local media had applauded Judge Samuel Ademosu's verdict that Foday Sankoh should hang for his part in supporting the former Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) which overthrew the government of President Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah in May 1997.
"It is obvious ordinary people believe justice has been done. However, there is also apprehension about reprisals by Sankoh's supporters," he commented.
Last week, a firing squad executed 24 soldiers found guilty of treason by a military court.
Their trial allowed no formal appeal process, raising a storm of protest by human rights organisations.
However, Sankoh reportedly told Ademosu he planned to appeal his civilian court conviction, which Sierra Leonean legal sources confirmed is subject to mandatory review by a higher court.
Fresh fighting in east
Meanwhile, media reports said fresh fighting had broken out in the east of the country at the weekend between AFRC forces and the members of the Nigerian-led West African intervention force in Sierra Leone, ECOMOG.
AFP said some 83 rebels had been killed in the clashes in the diamond-mining district of Kono, which analysts say is vital to financing the AFRC's war effort.
Reuters said as many as 20 rebels had also been killed in the northern town of Alikalia after a three-hour battle with ECOMOG. The news agency quoted ECOMOG officers as saying fighting started after some 300 rebels attacked local people on Saturday, killing several and mutilating others in what the rebels said was revenge for Sankoh's sentence.
LIBERIA: Government withdraws independent radio shortwave licence
Liberia's government has withdrawn independent Star Radio's shortwave licence, further restricting the ability of the Monrovia-based broadcaster to reach audiences beyond the capital, Star Radio told IRIN today.
Star Radio said it had received a ministry of posts and telecommunications directive on Friday withdrawing its shortwave licence based on "the objectives and ownership" of Star Radio.
The directive said that the ministry was carrying out a survey of the objectives of all shortwave stations. The shortwave licences of Catholic Radio Veritas and President Charles Taylor's Liberian Communications Network had so far been unaffected.
The restriction comes only two weeks after the minister of information, Joe Mulbah, banned Liberia's media from posting Web editions, accusing papers and radio stations with Websites of "operating news agencies on the Internet" without permission and running "unauthenticated newspaper articles and gossip columns".
A meeting between Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Maxwell Kaba and a delegation consisting of senior staff members of Star Radio, representatives of USAID and the US embassy, and a lawyer of Star Radio was inconclusive. Further contacts with the ministry will continue.
Last week, Taylor accused Liberian human rights organisations and media of trying to destroy the country's image abroad.
GUINEA: Opposition party says ruling party preparing poll fraud
Guinea's leading opposition party, le Rassemblement du peuple de Guinee (RPG), has accused the government of Lansana Conte of preparing a "massive fraud" of the presidential election due on 14 December, AFP reported on Saturday.
The party, opening its two-day national convention in Conakry on Saturday, said it had "damning evidence" of the fraud and vowed it would not accept the results of a "sham" election.
"The RPG and the overwhelming majority of Guineans believe today, more than ever, that free and fair democratic elections are not possible in Guinea," it added.
Abidjan, 26 October 1998, 18:30 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 or can be retrieved automatically by sending e-mail to <archive@ocha.unon.org> - mailing list: irin-wa-updates]
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 18:44:37 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-West Africa Update 324, 98.10.26 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981026184137.16322A-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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