WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Friday it has urged renegade general Laurent Nkunda to surrender and go into exile to avoid a bloody showdown with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) government troops.
Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told reporters that diplomat Timothy Shortley, her senior advisor for conflict, had spoken to Nkunda, a Tutsi leader, to give him the message.
“And we clearly conveyed the message to him that he should surrender, go into exile and allow his forces … to be demobilized,” Frazer said when asked if Washington wanted Nkunda disarmed by President Joseph Kabila’s forces.
“Clearly as a sovereign government, President Kabila has the right to try to exercise territorial sovereignty … he has right to use his forces against what is essentially a rebelious general from his own military,” she said.
“But our concern is that the civilian population not be caught in the middle of such an offensive against Nkunda so we’ve been urging Nkunda, the government of Kabila to try to end this through peaceful means,” she said.
Nonetheless, Frazer, who spoke before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travels to Ethiopia next week for a summit with leaders of African Great Lakes states such as the DRCongo, noted that Nkunda has resisted proposed exile.
On Tuesday, community leaders in the DRCongo joined forces to demand that the government track down Nkunda and hand him over to the courts.
The troubled eastern province of Nord-Kivu has seen heavy clashes since the end of August between some 4,000 insurgents loyal to the former general, and more than 20,000 government troops.
Nearly 400,000 civilians have been displaced by fighting in Nord-Kivu since the end of last year, according to the United Nations, in addition to some 800,000 who fled their homes following previous clashes.
Villagers have been displaced by fighting not only between the army and Nkunda, who claims to be protecting the minority Congolese Tutsi population, but also between Mai-Mai militia and Hutu rebels from Rwanda, who are hostile to Nkunda.
The United Nations has stepped up its criticism of Nkunda in recent days, leading the renegade general to accuse the world body’s mission in DRCongo of siding with government forces and warn of retaliation.
Sana’a – A total of 27 African illegal immigrants were killed Friday in a boating accident near the Yemeni coast, wintesses and police sources said. A boat carrying 120 illegal immigrants near the coast in Mayfa’h area in Hadramout province, 900 kilometres south-east of the capital Sana’a, capsized, the sources added.
The illegal immigrants, mostly Somali and Ethiopian, were heading from Somalia to Yemen.
Forty-five passengers survived while about 48 others were still missing.
No further details about the cause of the accident were immediately available.
ISIOLO, Kenya, Nov 30 (Reuters) – Kenyan police said on Friday they had arrested 12 suspected Ethiopian rebels and nine locals accused of helping them in a remote region on the border with Ethiopia.
Two of the suspected members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) rounded up this week have already been deported while the others are still being interrogated, said Rono Bunei, district police commander in the Kenyan border town of Moyale.
“The operation is still going on and we shall not allow any group to use our soil to fight a friendly government,” he said. The rest will be deported if confirmed as OLF members.
One of several insurgent groups fighting Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi’s government, the OLF seeks greater autonomy for ethnically Oromo areas of south Ethiopia.
The nine Kenyans were arrested for offering shelter to the 12, police said.
Some locals said innocent youths had been arrested.
“Most of the people arrested are Kenyans,” local resident Barrack Mohammed told Reuters.
“We have lived with them and they can’t do anything like that. The police are just picking on them.”
(Reporting by Noor Ali, Editing by Joseph Sudah and Robert Woodward)
The Absurdity of Asking a Slayer to Investigate His Murderous Regime
Now that the gruesome details of the ethnic cleansing tactics being employed by the current autocracy in Addis Ababa are slowly coming out, it is not unexpected for the Ethiopian prime minister to come out swinging against the veracity of the genocidal stories trickling out of Ogaden with the Ogaden refugees. After all who expects a slayer, at the level of Mr. Meles Zenawi, to own up to the military indiscretions of his minions and militias in Ogaden.
Coming out to claim that the fact that he was a former ‘insurgent’ makes him to avoid carrying out an ethnic cleansing in Ogaden is quite absurd to say the least. Given the documented and widely publicized human rights abuses and genocide reported in Ogaden, is it not that Zenawi is simply trying to deflect attention away from the very public decapitations, mutilations, and mass execution of innocent civilians that his poorly paid soldiers have been carrying out under his orders in Ogaden?
The only thing that is more absurd than Zenawi’s denials of ethnic cleansing and genocide is the otherwise impeccable U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes asking Zenawi to investigate the very murders and crimes against humanity that he has planned and ordered in Ogaden.
No one in their right mind asks a murderer to investigate his murders. The mass displacement, country-wide blockade, public beheadings, extra judicial killings, and the actions of the death squads that Zenawi has unleashed against the Ogaden masses should be investigated without delay by NOT ONE but by a panel of multi-UN agencies and human rights organizations. The Ethiopian regime should neither have no role nor a say in these investigations.
When the multi-UN agency panel convenes and since Zenawi has emphatically denied ‘that there have been no widespread human rights violations in the Ogaden, not only because we believe in the respect for human rights, but because we know how to fight the insurgency’ he should be personally held responsible for all the crimes against humanity that have so taken place in Ogaden.
Zenawi’s crimes are no less immoral than those carried out by the Hutu Interhamwe militias during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. These, Zanawi’s, crimes are no less wicked and gruesome than those carried out by Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.
Why initiate a global search for criminals like Interhamwe militias, Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic while allowing Zenawi to act like a statesman and even listen to his diatribes? If crimes against humanity are one and the same Zenawi and his murderous regime should be brought to justice instead of absurdly asking him to investigate his murderous regime.
Ethiopian anti-poverty activists Daniel Bekele and Netsanet Demissie will remain in prison for at least another 24 days, as Judges in Ethiopia’s High Court today delayed their verdict for the third time in two months, postponing it until 24 December.
“We are deeply dismayed by the court’s decision to delay the verdict yet again. These numerous postponements are unacceptable and infringe the rights of these innocent civil society leaders to a fair and swift trial. But we will not be deterred – we and others around the world will continue to insist on their immediate and unconditional release,” said Kumi Naidoo, Secretary General of CIVICUS and Co-Chair of GCAP.
After 25 months in prison, Daniel and Netsanet, both coordinators of the Global Call to Action against Poverty in Ethiopia, are the last two accused in the high profile Ethiopian treason trial that originally charged 131 politicians, journalists, organisations and civil society leaders in the wake of the country’s May 2005 parliamentary elections. They were due to hear their verdict this morning in Addis Ababa, on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government, specifically, “outrage against the constitution and constitutional order,” which carries a possible sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty.
In delaying the verdict, the court announced that one of the judges is ill and must be replaced. The postponement is allegedly to allow the replacement judge to familiarise himself with the case.
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For more information or interviews, please contact:
Julie Middleton, CIVICUS at +27 82 403 6040, [email protected]
Ciara O’Sullivan, GCAP at +34 679 594 809, [email protected]
For more information on CIVICUS: www.civicus.org
For more information on GCAP: www.whiteband.org
Few things in Ethiopia cause as much frustration and despair than the ongoing and deteriorating dismal state of Internet connectivity in the country. Given how the country continues to struggle with fundamental issues of development for its 80 million people, this lack of progress – and in some cases complete reversal of earlier growth – tests the hope of the most optimist observers and stake-holders.
In a test carried over 4 weeks time in July 2007, the average speed of Internet connectivity in the country had dropped to as low as 5 KBps. Photo: MediaETHIOPIA.
A case in point is the state of access to the web over the past several years through the numerous Internet cafes that have popped in most major parts of the country. In a test carried over 4 weeks time in July 2007, the average speed of Internet connectivity in the country had dropped to as low as 5 KBps. This is in par with the speed of most 4200 Baud modems the rest of the world was using in the early 90s – almost a century ago in Internet time… Read more
