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IRIN-WA Update 552 of events in West Africa (Thursday 16 September 1999)
GUINEA-BISSAU: IMF approves post-conflict aid
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has agreed to provide Guinea-Bissau with some US $3 million in post-conflict emergency aid for reconstruction and to revamp its war-shattered economy.
The IMF said the SDR 2.13 million package approved by its executive board on Tuesday would be available immediately.
The 1998-99 war caused considerable suffering to the population and damage to the economy and infrastructure.
First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF Stanley Fischer said the board approved the money because members were "encouraged by the determination shown by the government in seeking to redress the disruptions caused by the conflict, restore basic services, and rehabilitate the administrative structures, including the budget and tax offices."
Guinea-Bissau joined the IMF in March 1977.
COTE D'IVOIRE: Police release 388 opposition supporters
Ivorian police on Thursday released 388 supporters of opposition politician Alassane Ouattara arrested two days earlier outside his home following a clash with policemen who had gone there to deliver a summons.
The Ministry of Security announced the impending release in a statement published on Thursday in the pro-government `Fraternite Matin'. The ministry said President Henri Konan Bedie took the measure in the interest of public peace.
Ouattara's supporters had begun an all-night vigil around
his home in Abidjan on Monday out of fear that he would
be arrested by police. When policemen arrived there
on Tuesday to deliver a letter from the public prosecutor,
they were beaten up, the Security Ministry said. Reinforcements
were then sent.
The letter informed Ouattara, leader of the Rassemblement
des Republicains (RDR), that he would be questioned
on Thursday by police regarding the authenticity of
some of his documents.
The documents, offered as proof of his Ivoirian nationality, are being contested by the state which says he is ineligible to run for president because he is not an Ivoirian citizen of Ivoirian parentage.
After he produced documents in an attempt to prove his citizenship and parentage, an investigation was launched by the Justice Ministry to determine whether his papers were authentic.
LIBERIA: UNDP to strengthen environmental commission
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is to help strengthen the Liberia National Commission on the Environment under a project expected to cost US $450,000.
The project agreement was signed on 2 September by the UNDP and the Ministry of Development.
The Commission is responsible for coordinating and overseeing environmental management and analysis in Liberia.
The project will facilitate Liberia's signing and adherence to the international conventions on Climate Change and Biodiversity and facilitate the implementation of a national environmental outreach programme. This aims to ensure that the Liberian people are better educated on major environmental concerns.
Liberia is endowed with valuable natural resources but uncontrolled exploitation of these resources and other unsustainable activities have created environmental degradation that needs to be addressed urgently, according to UNDP.
The most significant causes of these problems are shifting cultivation, logging, fuel wood harvesting and charcoal production, human settlements, illicit fishing and unsustainable mineral and sand mining activities.
Environmental awareness has been affected by the lack of an environmental policy, fragmented environmental laws and the absence of an enforcement mechanism. The Commission on the Environment was activated in late 1998 to combat the degradation of the environment.
AFRICA: Search for vaccine dominates AIDS conference
An air of optimism dominated the 11th International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa (ICASA) in Lusaka as experts expressed growing confidence in the prospect of an early HIV vaccine.
Hopes were buoyed by the disclosure that production had started on the first HIV-vaccine to be developed in collaboration with African researchers, and that early clinical trials on human beings would begin in January in Britain.
"Researchers from the University of Nairobi are working with vaccine scientists from Oxford University in the UK to produce a vaccine which targets the strain of HIV most prevalent in East Africa," Nick Gouedde of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) said.
[See separate Item: irin-english-1614, titled 'Search for vaccine dominates international AIDS conference']
The Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund, Carol Bellamy, told the conference on Wednesday that sub-Saharan African countries needed a massive infusion of resources if they were to make any significant headway against HIV/AIDS.
Bellamy called the pandemic "the world's most terrible undeclared war". She said: "Some 200,000 people, most of them children and women, died in 1998 as a result of armed conflict on the African continent, and yet two million Africans were killed by AIDS in that same year."
"Poor countries need more than encouragement," in the fight against HIV/AIDS, she said. "They need income support, debt relief and strong social safety nets. Most of all, they need resources."
Bellamy called on the international community to "eliminate the staggering inequities and inequalities that are contributing to the spread of the pandemic - along with many other consequences of global poverty."
NIGERIA: Military ruler's aide to be prosecuted
The top security aide to the late Nigerian military
ruler, General Sani Abacha, will be prosecuted, AFP
quoted a spokesman for President Olusegun Obasanjo
as saying on Wednesday.
Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, chief security officer under Abacha, has been in detention since shortly after Abacha died in June last year but has yet to be formally charged with any offence.
Obasanjo's spokesman, Doyin Okupe, did not say on what charges Mustapha would be prosecuted, AFP said.
"Mustapha and others who might have been involved in crime will be prosecuted," at the end of an investigation underway into their actions, Okupe said in a live interview on a local television station, AIT.
Media reports have linked Mustapha to some of the human
rights violations, assassinations and harassment and
torture of opposition figures during the Abacha regime
which lasted from late 1994 to mid-1998.
Abidjan, 16 September 1999; 18:10 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1624
[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, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org 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
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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