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IRIN-WA Update 466 of events in West Africa (Tuesday 18 May)
GUINEA: RUF rebels kill two in border village
Sierra Leonean rebels shot dead two villagers and burned
their bodies in an attack on Dinde, a village in the
west Guinean district of Tassin, UNHCR reported officials
in the area's main town, Forecariah, as saying.
The 15 May attack was the fourth this year in the border prefecture of Forecariah, which includes Tassin, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday. The authorities in Forecariah said the attackers also burned huts and stole a large quantity of food stocks and cattle from Dinde.
The rebel attack has renewed distrust among villagers towards Sierra Leonean refugees in a nearby camp in Tassin, whom they suspect of harbouring rebels, UNHCR said.
[See separate item issued earlier today by IRIN West Africa]
COTE D'IVOIRE: Disaster averted
Local firefighters assisted by their French counterparts as well as other Ivoirian services looked set on Tuesday to win a five-day battle against a fire at a major fuel depot located in the Vridi industrial zone here.
A senior official of the Energy Ministry told IRIN on Tuesday that the firefighting team "is attacking the fire for the last time" and that top officials of the ministry had gone to the scene of the fire at the Gestion des Stocks petrolieres de Cote d'Ivoire' (GESTOCI).
Oil companies, the port authorities, ASECNA - the Ivoirian aviation security service - the police, gendarmes and CIAPOL (Ivoirian anti-pollution centre) participated along with the firemen in the effort to combat the fire, the source said.
There was no longer any risk of the fire spreading to an adjoining oil refinery, the Societe ivoirienne de raffinage (SIR), he said.
[See separate item issued earlier today by IRIN West Africa]
LIBERIA: Taylor accuses ECOMOG of training men to overthrow him
President Charles Taylor has accused the West African peacekeeping force, ECOMOG, of training men to overthrow his government, according to news organisations.
Taylor reportedly told journalists at a news conference on Monday at the Executive Mansion in Monrovia that ECOMOG's former base, where arms and ammunition retrieved by the peacekeepers during a disarmament campaign are stocked, was to play an important role in a planned attack.
"We have learned that former ECOMOG soldiers are in mufti in Monrovia and ready to topple this government," Reuters reported Taylor as saying.
Last week, Kiss FM, a radio station founded by Taylor, had also quoted the president as saying the Liberian authorities had discovered a plot to topple him through a raid from the former ECOMOG base, Reuters reported. The radio station announced that, followng these reports, Taylor had deployed government soldiers at the base to protect the weapons stored there.
Last Thursday a UN official told IRIN that the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the UN were examining ways of disposing of weapons left over from Liberia's seven-year civil war.
UN team arrives on information-gathering mission
Meanwhile, a five-member UN team has arrived in Monrovia to gather information on fighting last September between government forces and supporters of former faction leader Roosevelt Johnson, a UN official told IRIN on Tuesday.
The team, headed by James Ngobi, a former Director in the UN Department of Political Affairs, is on "an independent information gathering mission at the invitation of the Liberian government and will submit its findings to the UN Secretary-General," the official said.
It was sent at the request of the Liberian government.
[See separate item issued earlier today by IRIN West
Africa]
GUINEA BISSAU: Junta in talks with Portugal over Vieira
Representatives of Guinea Bissau's Military Junta and Portuguese officials began talks on Monday on the fate of deposed Guinea Bissau President Joao Bernardo Vieira, Lusa reported.
The Junta's four-member delegation met with Portuguese Defence Minister Jose Viega Simao to discuss Vieira's asylum, granted by Lisbon, and the Junta's demand that he be handed over for trial.
Vieira sought refuge in the Portuguese Embassy in Bissau after his ouster on 7 May. Guinea Bissau's new rulers say they want him tried in connection with the smuggling of arms to Casamance rebels in Southern Senegal and other crimes against the state, according to news reports.
Junta spokesman Zamora Induta told reporters before boarding a Portuguese air force jet for Lisbon that although the new rulers wanted Vieira tried, he might be allowed to go into exile for "health or other reasons", Lusa said.
Abidjan, 18 May 1999, 20:00 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-850
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information or free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or fax: +254 2 622129 or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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