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IRIN-WA Update 487 of events in West Africa (Wednesday 16 June)
AFRICA: Obasanjo on troop withdrawal from Sierra Leone
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said Wednesday that his government would like to withdraw Nigerian troops from Sierra Leone and Liberia but also wanted to avoid jeopardising the security of the two nations.
"What we want to do is get Nigerian troops out as quickly as possible without threatening the security of Sierra Leone and Liberia," Obasanjo told a news conference in Johannesburg.
"I believe that peace should involve more dialogue than force," added Obasanjo, who travelled to South Africa to attend Wednesday's inauguration of President-elect Thabo Mbeki.
Nigerians form the bulk of ECOMOG (Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) peacekeepers in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Earlier this week, Sierra Leonean President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was reported by news media as saying that the ECOMOG peacekeepers would stay in the country for as long as possible.
Obasanjo agrees Nigeria peacekeepers for Congo
Obasanjo also said he could foresee a role for Nigerian peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as part of a collaborative peace initiative with South Africa.
"Under the right auspices and the right conditions," a Nigerian peacekeeping force could be dispatched to DRC, he said."We would like to see a situation where we can help a country like the Congo to help itself and where troops from other countries can be withdrawn. We can help to achieve this."
Obasanjo was an officer in Nigeria's first UN peacekeeping mission to the Congo in the early 1960s.
NIGERIA: Panel on abandoned projects set up
President Olusegun Obasanjo has set up a panel to review hundreds of projects abandoned by federal ministries and government firms under Nigeria's last four military administrations (1984-May 1999), AFP reported on Tuesday, quoting state officials.
The 12-member body, which will work from the vice president's office, will assess the degree of work carried out and whether the payments were commensurate with the jobs done. It will examine the reasons why projects were not finished and recommend how this could be avoided in future.
New intelligence director appointed
Uche Okeke has been named the new director general of the National Intelligence Agency, state radio and television have reported. He replaces Ambassador G.B. Prowery, who has been appointed permanent secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The appointment, announced on Monday, takes immediate effect.
NIGER: Government suspends mass retirement of civil servants
Niger's trade unions have reacted to a government decision to freeze the planned dismissal of some 2,000 public servants by suspending a two-day strike that was to have begun on Wednesday, a media source told IRIN.
The strike had been aimed at supporting public servants' demands for the payment of eight months' salary owed to them and protesting against the dismissals.
Under a reform programme supported by the World Bank, Niger's previous government issued an ordinance in December that provided for the dismissal of public servants who had reached the age of 50 or had 30 years of service.
Information Minister Mahamadou Dandah told IRIN on Wednesday that the ordinance was suspended because measures that were to have accompanied it could not be taken following the suspension of aid to Niger. Aid was frozen in reaction to the coup on 9 April of this year that brought the Conseil national de Reconciliation (CNR) to power.
Listing some of the accompanying measures, Dandah said public servants were owed eight months' salary and the plan was that at least those due for retirement would receive their back pay and gratuities, while some would be helped to go into business.
The suspension of the ordinance was discussed at talks between the CNR and union representatives, said Dandah, who is a member of an inter-ministerial team that has been holding consultations with the CNR's "partners". These include civil society and interest groups and international bodies such as the World Bank.
Dandah stressed that the ordinance had been suspended but not scrapped since "all parties agree that reforms cannot be circumvented but need to agree on the modalities of implementing them".
LIBERIA: Concern over poor roads
Thousands of people in rural Liberia are unable to transport their produce to the capital, Monrovia, because of the poor state of roads there, Star radio quoted the president of the Liberia Marketing Association (LMA), Martha Saye, as saying.
She added that the poor condition of the roads caused goods to be damaged along the way and also hiked costs since it led drivers to raise their fares.
SIERRA LEONE: Humanitarian needs
An humanitarian team that carried out an assessment on 9 June of villages between Masiaka and Rogberi Junction, noted that while the situation there had not reached crisis level, it had the potential to deteriorate rapidly.
Rogberi is some 20 km north of Masiaka, which is around 60 km east of Freetown. Intermittent fighting over the previous five months in the area had resulted in the destruction of property, deaths and human rights abuses.
The team found that food was scarce and most people were surviving on cassava and mangoes, according to its report, compiled by the UN Humanitarian Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU).
Rebels had destroyed much of the previous year's supply of seeds so farmers were unable to plant, while many of the some 10,000 people in the villages relied on traditional medicines and, to a lesser extent, medicine bought from Freetown, HACU said.
The assessment team included representatives from the United Nations, the Sierra Leone Government, the Sierra Leone Red Cross and international NGOs.
It found that a large influx of displaced persons had caused severe overcrowding - up to 50 people living in the same house. There was a "considerable" risk of waterborne diseases due to inadequate water and sanitation facilities, it said, adding that many schools had been closed.
Of particular concern for the assessment mission were the security risks associated with the presence of rebels living around some of the villages who were short of food.
According to the report, an arrangement had been made with ECOMOG for small groups of unarmed rebels to be allowed into the villages to buy food. However, villages without ECOMOG checkpoints were visited almost daily by rebels and villagers were forced to sell or give them food or personal possessions.
In some areas, the proximity of the rebels to the villages has reduced the amount of land available for planting, HACU said.
The mission recommended that although there was a clear need to provide humanitarian assistance to civilians, it needed to be balanced against the risk that relief supplies could be seized by nearby rebel forces.
As a result humanitarian interventions needed to be weighted in favour of "health, water and sanitation and longer-term food security programmes that are less likely to cause problems for the beneficiaries," according to HACU.
Specifically, the report recommended an immediate distribution of seeds and tools to enable those farmers who have prepared their land to begin planting. Farmers stated that if seed was available, they would plant cassava, okra, cucumber and rice.
The team also recommended further assessments of the area by medical, water and sanitation specialists to determine the best way to intervene in these sectors. Urgent attention should also be given to the issue of food for rebel forces which "is probably the most relevant (problem) for the continuing ceasefire", HACU said.
WESTERN SAHARA: UN Mission resumes voter identification
The United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) on Tuesday resumed the identification of voters for a referendum in July 2000.
The referendum is to allow the people of Western Sahara to decide between independence and integration with Morocco, which annexed the former Spanish colony in 1975.
The identification is initially taking place in two centres, one in Laayoune and the other at Camp Smara, a refugee camp in the Tindouf area in Algeria.
Abidjan, 16 June 1999, 18:55 GMT
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-1046
[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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