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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 578 for West Africa (Friday 22 October 1999)
CONTENTS:
SIERRA LEONE: RUF leader criticises cabinet appointments
LIBERIA: Last ECOMOG troops begin leaving LIBERIA:
Taylor warns against harassment of investors LIBERIA:
Ethnic animosity in the south BENIN: Helping to improve
access to reproductive health services BENIN: Refugee
centre inaugurated GHANA: Parliamentarians want the
north declared a disaster zone
SIERRA LEONE: RUF leader criticises cabinet appointments
Revolutionary United Front leader Foday Sankoh criticised President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah on Thursday for not offering former rebel groups the ministries of justice, finance or foreign affairs in the new unity government.
Kabbah has offered the Ministry of Trade and Industry, which his spokesman, Septimus Kaikai, said on Thursday was a senior portfolio, to former rebel Mike Lamine. Kaikai told IRIN that the determination of what constituted a senior ministry was Kabbah's to make.
Under the Lome peace treaty signed on 7 July between the rebels and the government, the rebels are to get "one of the senior cabinet appointments such as finance, foreign affairs and justice".
The government is interpreting the words "such as" to mean "for example", Kaikai said. Sankoh told AFP on Thursday that this was "a wrong interpretation of the peace accord".
LIBERIA: Last ECOMOG troops begin leaving
The last ECOMOG troops have begun leaving Liberia nine
years after they first went there to end a civil war,
Fred Eckhard, spokesman of the UN Secretary-General,
said on Thursday.
News reports said Nigeria finished withdrawing its troops
on Wednesday. They had mainly been guarding stockpiled
arms - surrendered by the former warring factions -
the last of which were destroyed on Monday. The remainder
of the ECOMOG contingent, which include Ghanaians,
are to be withdrawn by Saturday, according to AFP.
President Charles Taylor decorated six ECOMOG commanders and praised ECOMOG for its peace efforts in Liberia and neighbouring Sierra Leone. As a rebel faction leader during Liberia's civil war, Taylor was the most ardent critic of ECOMOG's intervention.
He also presented the Presidential Medal of Honour to the United Nations, and particularly the United Nations Observer Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL) in recognition of "their sacrificial and dedicated services towards our peacekeeping and peace-building efforts".
LIBERIA: Taylor warns against harassment of investors
President Charles Taylor has warned public officials he will punish them or any other people if they are caught harassing investors, Star radio reported on Thursday.
Taylor gave the warning on Wednesday when launching a project to build a 160-km road between Buchanan and Greenville that will be executed by a Liberian-Malaysian Company.
Taylor said the firm had made an initial capital investment of nearly US $50 million. The company will also manage the port of Buchanan - the country's second largest - in Grand Bassa County, engage in logging and process timber in Liberia.
LIBERIA: Ethnic animosity in the south
The superintendent of the southern county of Sinoe, Willemina Davies, has cautioned residents against fanning ethnic hatred, Star radio reported on Thursday.
She was reacting to a complaint she received from the commissioner of Kpanyan District, Amos Dweh, that people from two communities, the Numopo and Tartua, had refused to work together. Dweh raised the concern during a citizens' meeting with Davies, who promised a reconciliation meeting between the two communities.
BENIN: Helping to improve access to reproductive health services
Helping to improve women's access to reproductive health care services is the thrust of the first project to be carried out in Benin by the international relief and development organisation CARE, which on Thursday announced the start of its operations in the West African nation.
"Lack of reproductive health care services in Benin takes a horrific human toll each year," said Jack Soldate, director of CARE's West Africa programmes. About 500 out of every 100,000 women die each year as a result of complications during childbirth, according to the UNFPA. Infant mortality is also high.
CARE's three-year project will help Benin-Sante, a network of non-governmental organisations, and its 80 member organisations to strengthen their ability to improve the reproductive health of Beninese women.
BENIN: Refugee centre inaugurated
The Beninese government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on Friday inaugurated a refugee centre in Kpomasse, some 40 km outside Cotonou, the commercial capital of Benin.
Some 1,030 refugees, 730 from the Democratic Republic of Congo, 200 from Nigeria and some 100 Togolese, are accommodated at the centre which was built at a cost of over US $1.5 million. Contributions came from the Benin government, Belgium, UNHCR, the Beninese water and electricity utility and the Centre Songhai, the local NGO that implemented the project, UNHCR reported.
The centre also includes a training site at which some 200 refugees and inhabitants of the neighbouring village will be taught courses in areas such as farming, livestock development, masonry and carpentry. The long-term aim of the training is to enable the refugees to be self-sufficient, less dependent on international relief, UNHCR said.
"Putting this centre right in the middle of a village in Benin would allow refugees to interact with their local hosts since many of them may be in exile for a number of years," Abou Moussa, UNHCR Regional Director for Africa, said.
Over the years, Benin has hosted thousands of refugees, most of them from Togo. During a political crisis in Togo in 1992-1993, some 150,000 Togolese fled to the neighbouring country. The vast majority went back voluntarily with the UNHCR's help in 1997, but some 1,350 remain in Benin and do not want to return home for security reasons, according to UNHCR.
GHANA: Parliamentarians want the north declared a disaster zone
Parliamentarians from northern Ghana have called for three regions affected by floods this month to be declared a disaster zone so that resources needed to assist people there can be mobilised.
The sum of about 60 billion cedis (just under US $21 million) is needed to resettle and rehabilitate the affected communities - 18 billion for relief food, 36 billion for emergency road repairs and six billion for drugs - the parliamentarians said.
"This amount is so colossal that the government can only be permitted to spend it under a declaration of a national disaster," they said in a statement read out in parliament on Tuesday by M. A. Seidu, deputy majority leader in the house.
He said the government alone could not stand the cost of rehabilitating the area and appealed to NGOs, international organisations, churches and donor agencies to help by providing food aid, building materials and drugs.
Seidu said the floods had displaced about 150,000 persons and destroyed 70,000 acres of farmland. "The people are faced with severe food shortages," he said. Many kilometres of roads have been washed away and several communities have been cut off, he added.
Abidjan, 22 October 1999; 19:28 GMT
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-1838
[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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