TEHRAN (FNA)- Djibouti Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed asked Iran to help mediate in the talks between Eritrea and Djibouti aimed at ending border conflicts between the Horn of Africa nations.
Osman made the remarks in a joint press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in Tehran on Tuesday.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a 1998-2000 war over their frontier, and tensions between the two nations remain high. The fighting along the Djibouti-Eritrea border broke out in the Mount Gabla area, also known as Ras Doumeira, which straddles the Bab al-Mandib straits.
During the press conference, Mottaki said Iran is prepared to help resolve the prolonged conflict, Tehran Times reported.
Djibouti hosts French and US military bases and is the main route to the sea for Eritrea’s arch-foe Ethiopia. Africa’s youngest nation, Eritrea has fractious ties with the West, which accuses it of backing Somali insurgents and impeding UN peacekeepers on the Ethiopia border.
Djibouti says the fighting began after Eritrean soldiers fired on some deserters, prompting Djibouti to return fire.
Analysts say Eritrean-Ethiopian hostility is fuelling the spat.
Latest clashes between the two countries killed at least nine people and wounded 60 others.
“The policy of looking to Africa is atop Iran’s foreign policy agenda. This policy requires Iran to deepen ties with African countries,” Mottaki noted.
He said the ground is fertile for further cooperation between Tehran and Djibouti in the fisheries, health, trade, and energy sectors.
Osman also expressed satisfaction over the friendly relations between Djibouti and Iran. He expressed hope that his visit will pave the way for further expansion of bilateral ties.
The Bush administration had eight years to run our country’s reputation on human rights into the ground. It succeeded not only in tarnishing America’s image, but also in derailing the entire international human rights movement. As a professor of human rights who has studied the opportunities and challenges for the White House in transition periods, I know that the window of opportunity for distinguishing yourself from your predecessor is open now, but you must act quickly and decisively if you are to get human rights back on track.
Here are four steps that you can take:
Step one: Create a relationship with U.S.-based human rights organizations.
The Bush administration treated human rights advocates as enemies and shrugged off their reminders of international standards as inconvenient roadblocks. The Obama administration should consider these same groups to be allies and even partners in promoting human dignity and freedom at home and worldwide. Reaching out to human rights activists can be accomplished by calling to the White House a broad range of human rights advocates for regularly scheduled dialogues on human rights. Listen to the advocates. They know their constituencies, and many have fresh knowledge and experience from human rights frontlines and fault-lines. The kind of information they can provide is so central to the creation of your foreign policy strategies that you may wish to launch the dialogue before you take office.
Step two: Repair your relationship with human rights bodies at the United Nations.
Instead of seeking solutions to problems within UN structures designed to unify countries in a common quest for peace, President Bush took a “go-it-alone” approach. This “you’re with us or against us” mantra was designed to separate and divide. The Obama administration can publically reaffirm its commitment to the UN human rights framework and reassert its interest in taking part in the Human Rights Council, the new centerpiece of the UN human rights system. The Bush administration pulled out of the running for a seat on the body because it feared being subjected to review. (The Council reviews its own members first and, thus, would have subjected the United States to review just as it was being criticized for its practices on torture). Although the Council is a deeply flawed institution, the United States has the responsibility to work with those who are trying to get it right. It would be exceedingly helpful if the new appointments of Americans to UN bodies shared a concern with making human rights mechanisms work. That would be a tremendous difference from the Bush administration appointees, who ranged between being skeptical to being openly hostile toward human rights.
Step three: Do something that unequivocally demonstrates that the United States will no longer act as if it is above international law.
A good start would be the creation of an independent body to investigate the role of military and civilian authorities, acting with direct or implicit approval of the U.S. government, in the torture and abuse of detainees. The investigation can start with Guantánamo, but its mandate should be broad. The Bush administration played one legal game after another to advance a distorted view of the proper usage of military courts and to assert a legally incorrect definition of torture. You can count on support from military lawyers on this one. During the first Bush administration, (especially during the Gulf War), U.S. military lawyers played a key role in overseeing the legality of the actions of not only the U.S. military, but also its allies. The second Bush administration, however, marginalized and ignored those same military lawyers. (George W. Bush’s administration didn’t like the legal answers it was getting from military experts on torture, so it turned elsewhere for lawyers willing to follow the administration’s script). Your administration can reaffirm White House respect for military lawyers by hearing and valuing their analysis of the missteps in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Step four: In your first week in office, get out your pen and begin signing some long overdue international human rights treaties.
President Bush’s scorn of international treaties went so far as to lead him to take the unprecedented move of “unsigning” the treaty establishing an International Criminal Court and the Vienna Convention on Treaties. You might begin by re-signing these, as well as signing on to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention signed by every country in the world except for the United States and Somalia, and the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, a convention modeled largely on American disability law. These are no-brainers. As to the rest of the human rights treaties that are not signed and/or not ratified, or that are signed and largely ignored, you should appoint an independent board of experts to study and report on the likely outcome of greater American engagement in the treaty processes.
Instead of being viewed as a magnanimous human rights leader, the United States is today considered to be an arrogant human rights cheater. Rebuilding the reputation of the United States and reestablishing its role as a global leader on human rights will take time. But these four steps will give your administration a good start.
Sincerely yours,
Julie Mertus
Julie Mertus is a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, a professor at American University, and the author of the award-winning book Bait and Switch: Human Rights and U.S. Foreign Policy (2nd ed. 2008)
Ibrahim Hussein says his faith in the American dream was reaffirmed Tuesday night when Barack Obama won the race for the White House.
The executive director of the East African Community of Orange County, a nonprofit group that helps refugees get resettled here, says community members are jubilant about Obama’s victory. A celebration is planned at 10 a.m. on Saturday at Heritage Park in Irvine.
“We’re happy and what I am hearing from my own children and other groups is that it’s great to be American and great to be here. People are feeling that the American dream is a reality and is reachable. We just have to work hard for it,” Hussein says.
Himself an immigrant who came to the United States some 19 years ago, Hussein was born in Ethiopia to a Kenyan mother and a Somali father. Four of his seven children are American born; three of them voted along with him and his wife on Election Day.
He says he now believes that Obama’s story could be the story of his children.
“We feel very much blessed that we’re here within this community and we have been given a lot,” Hussein says. “We are so happy that one of our own became a U.S. president in our own lifetime and I feel very much that my kid can be like him tomorrow … It’s only possible in the United States. This is just a great land.”
He estimates that there are about 8,000-9,000 East African refugees in Orange County, including about 1,200 from Kenya, the country from which Obama’s father hailed. Kenya observed a national holiday today to mark Obama’s victory.
MOGADHISHU (Reuters) – Somalis expressed hope on Thursday that Barack Obama’s election to the U.S. presidency would help end anarchy in the Horn of Africa nation which Washington views as an important front in its ‘war on terror’.
Somalia has suffered 17 years of civil conflict, the latest manifestation a two-year Islamist insurgency against the Western-backed government and its Ethiopian military allies.
Kidnappings and assassinations are rife and there was no word on Thursday on the fate of six foreigners — two Kenyan pilots and four European aid-workers — seized in central Somalia the day before.
Ethiopia is the main U.S. ally in the region, and its intervention in Somalia since 2006 is viewed by some analysts as a proxy action for U.S. President George W. Bush’s government.
“We are very happy because we think Obama will eliminate Bush’s pressure and mistreatment of the Muslim world and Somalia,” said Mohamud Hussein, a local elder in Mogadishu.
“We believe he will help Somalis make their country peaceful and financially assist them. We were extremely happy to hear of his victory because he is an African.”
Obama faces a complex situation in Somalia, which some people dub an “African Iraq” and where a series of U.S. air-strikes have been targeting alleged al Qaeda suspects.
If the United States encourages Ethiopia to withdraw its troops, that may give ground to hardline Islamists who want to topple the government. But it may also encourage a U.N.-brokered peace deal under consideration between moderate Islamists and the government which hinges on Ethiopia’s exit.
HOSTAGES
Mother-of-six Hawa Aden, in Afgoye town outside Mogadishu, said she hoped the United Nations would intervene in Somalia, replacing the Ethiopians and a 3,000-strong African Union force.
“We hope he will withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and deploy a U.N peacekeeping force in Somalia so that we can enjoy peace like other human beings in the world,” she said.
Mindful of its disastrous intervention in Somalia in the mid-1990s, the U.N. Security Council is reluctant to go in again, though it is studying options.
Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon said President Abdullahi Yusuf’s administration was “very happy” with Obama and urged him to seek peace across the Horn of Africa.
He said the U.N.-brokered peace efforts, including a ceasefire the government and moderate Islamists signed in Djibouti last month, had created a good atmosphere.
An Islamist spokesman, Abdirahim Isse Adow, however, ruled out external intervention. “It is the Somalis themselves that create peace and not America,” he said.
Adow said his group, the Islamic Courts Union, was not behind Wednesday’s kidnapping of six foreigners at an airstrip near the town of Dusamareb and would help secure their release.
Two French women, a Bulgarian woman and a Belgian man working for Action Contre La Faim charity were captured along with two Kenyan pilots, sources say.
Aid workers in Nairobi and Somalia fear the militant Islamist group al Shabaab (Youth in Arabic) may be behind the seizure, the latest in a series of abductions, assassinations and attacks on aid workers in Somalia this year.
They were giving little information on the situation, for fear of jeopardising efforts to release the six.
“We know and saw the group that kidnapped the two pilots and the four aid-workers, but mentioning the identity of the kidnappers will mean another problem,” said nervous local resident Mohamed Aden.
“I understand that they slightly injured a French lady who hesitated when the armed men took them at gunpoint.”
Kidnapping can be a lucrative business in Somalia, with hostages generally treated well in anticipation of a ransom.
NAIROBI, KENYA – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s 86-year-old grandmother, Sarah Obama, said she will attend her grandson’s presidential inauguration ceremony in Washington early next year.
Speaking to journalists after the Democratic presidential candidate won the historic elections, Sarah said she will take Obama’s favorite food, chapatti, a traditional Kenyan pastry, with her when she goes to the ceremony.
She is also already planning what to serve the Illinois Senator when he makes his first visit to the village as the leader of the United States.
“We are so happy and Kenya is also celebrating, we are going to feat. This is absolute joy,” Sarah said, according to the Daily Nation newspaper on Thursday.
“I am so happy that I don’t know if I will die of happiness at the airport,” when Obama arrives, Sarah Obama told reporters at her homestead. “It will not only change our lives but the whole of Kenya.”
Africa has been rooting for Obama from the very moment he announced he was running for presidency. The election victory of the son of a Kenyan father was being celebrated and savored all over the continent.
The villagers of Kogelo, who are neighbors of the Obama family, had offered 10 bulls for a feast on Wednesday, and more offers were coming.
Food is the greatest gift in what is some of the most fertile farmland in all of Kenya, where mangos, bananas, corn and tomatoes grow among red-budded flame trees.
Sarah is one of the wives of Obama’s grandfather, instead of the natural mother of Obama’s father. But Obama treats her just like his natural grandmother.
Sarah is “very happy about what has happened, and she’s happy not just for herself but for the whole world,” said Obama’s Kenyan half-sister, Auma, who served as interpreter and the family’s spokesperson.
The people of Kogelo, and the Obama family in particular, have been at the center of a two-year media blitz. Sarah took a nap before facing reporters outside her tidy little blue-roofed house.
The rest of the extended family celebrated by dancing and chanting in the local Luo language, “Obama Biro, Yaw Ne Yo,” or “Obama is coming, clear his path.”
Most of Kenya and the rest of Africa took the news of Obama’s election as a symbolic victory for the continent.
“I have not been talking to him of late because he was busy on the campaign trial,” Sarah said and attributed her grandson’s success to hard work, love for people and his oratory skills.
Auma said they don’t expect life to change much with an Obama in the White House.
“As a family, we support Barack but we have no expectations. Because we are very, very clear that this is something he is doing in America and that he is an American president,” said Auma.
She said that although Kenyans are excited, she realizes that he won’t provide any quick fixes for their country.
“He makes it very clear that he is an American and his first priority is to Americans,” she said. “We have not lacked anythingso we don’t expect that to change.”
Obama’s connection to the western Kenyan village of Nyang’oma-Kogelo near Lake Victoria comes through his father, also named Barack Obama.
After winning a scholarship to study in the U.S., the elder Obama enrolled in the University of Hawaii, where he met and married Obama’s mother, fellow student Ann Dunham.
After returning to the village when Barack was young, the father died in a car crash in 1982.
After the village held prayers for Obama, who is known as “WuodAlego,” (the son of the Alego), the region where the village is located, Sarah said when she does meet Obama, she plans to tell him to initiate development projects in Kenya and the United States, especially those that foster global peace.
Sarah has been the Kenyan face of the Obama family since he became Illinois Senator. She has dined with the high and mighty but maintained her humility and hospitality that has made her the darling of the locals, tourists and journalists.
The president-elect, 47, has visited Kenya three times, most recently in 2006 when he saw an AIDS clinic in Kibera, a slum of 700,000 people in Nairobi, the capital.
With his wife, Michelle, he visited AIDS patients at a hospital in Kisumu, about 70 km southeast of his family’s village. He also visited Sarah and a primary school that the village named after him.
Asked whether she is worried about Obama’s security following recent threats against his life, Sarah said she has never given it much thought. And although they become part of the United States’ first family, Sarah said that they would not like to be treated differently from the rest of the villagers.
“We ought not to be treated differently. We are a normal family and we do not expect anything special,” she said.
Ethiopian world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie has confirmed his readiness to participate at the 2nd Glo Lagos International Half Marathon scheduled for February 21, 2009.
Speaking in Lagos at a media briefing to herald the highest prize money road race in the African continent yesterday, Violet Odogwu-Nwajei, president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) hinted that the Ethiopian, who only last September at the Berlin Marathon, smashed his previous best of 2hr 4min 26sec with a new world record of 2hr 3mins 59secs is really excited coming to Nigeria.
“We were together in Monaco recently and he confirmed to me that he is interested in coming to run the Glo Lagos International Half Marathon. Unlike the last time when he couldn’t make it, Gebrselassie will be in town for this second edition,” stressed the AFN president.
Gebrselassie, with two Olympic gold medals and countless other triumphs in road races, last August opted not to compete at the Beijing Olympics because of concerns over pollution.
However, the Ethiopian will not have the $50,000 first prize money at stake an easy pick. Sponsors of the half marathon, Globacom has line up 99 other top elite marathoners for this edition.
Globacom’s Executive Director, Human Resources, Mr. Adewale Sangowawa, while announcing the theme of the marathon as “Run for The Heart,” said that the theme enjoins every participant to run not only for the health of his or her own heart, but also for the health of other Nigerians.
He disclosed that the marathon would be used to raise money for the Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF). “I am pleased to announce that Globacom has entered into a strategic partnership with the Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF), to raise money for research into, as well as the prevention and cure of cardiovascular diseases.”
While giving a breakdown of the $210,000 prize money at stake, Mrs Modele Sarafa-Yusuf, the Project Manager of the marathon, said the overall winners in the male and female categories, will receive $50,000 each, the first runner up in the male and female categories will get $25,000 each while the second runner up in the male and female categories will cart home $15,000 each.
Unlike the first edition when there was nothing for the local runners, the first Nigerian male and female winners will go home with brand new Kia Picanto cars while the second set of Nigerians to breast the tape in the male and female categories will get N1 million each.
Globacom will also cap the special provision for the Nigerian runners with N750, 000 each for the third Nigerians in the male and female categories to finish the race.
