WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly Round-up 23 covering the period 5-11 June 1999

SIERRA LEONE: Thorny issues under discussion Sierra Leone’s government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels this week discussed suggestions on thorny issues, put forward by a facilitation committee at their talks in Lome, a source close to the talks told IRIN. One of the main issues on which the two sides still needed to reach agreement, the source said, was the withdrawal of ECOMOG troops. Another was the rebels’ demand for a transitional government. The two sides have agreed to safe and unhindered access to allow delivery of humanitarian assistance and the immediate release of prisoners of war and non-combatants. Food aid arrives Already, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Paris-based food agency, Action Contre La Faim (ACF), and CARE have been able to send relief supplies to Sierra Leone. ACF said it sent some 1,000 mt of food aid to Sierra Leone. WFP said on Monday that it had delivered 146 mt of food to Bo, some 170 km south east of Freetown, for the first time in five months. “More than 60,000 displaced people in the southern towns of Bo and Kenema depend on this food,” Paul Ares, the WFP regional manager said. CARE reported on Wednesday that it had sent 800 mt to the southern hinterland since 29 April. UN Secretary General stresses need for access to entire country In his latest report to the UN Security Council, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan stressed the need to establish mechanisms to ensure “unhindered humanitarian access to all parts of the country” and to promote effective coordination and cooperation between humanitarian agencies, the government and the RUF. He also recommended a six-month extension - to 13 December- of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL). Safe transport of food to Bo and Kenema is one of the priority areas listed by humanitarian agencies for discussion by a newly formed Implementation Committee (IC), UN Humanitarian Coordinator Kinglsey Amaning told IRIN on Tuesday. Other priority areas include access for assessment missions by relief agencies to the north, north-east and north-west and a nationwide polio immunisation campaign coordinated by the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF). The IC was formed after both sides reached agreement on guaranteeing “safe and unhindered access” for humanitarian agencies. It will assess the security of routes to be used by humanitarian agencies and review complaints that may follow the implementation of the agreement. LIBERIA: Meeting to prepare for weapon destruction The presidents of Nigeria and Liberia have asked ECOWAS Executive Secretary Lansana Kouyate to make preparations for the destruction of weapons seized at the end of Liberia’s civil war, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said on Monday. Liberian President Charles Taylor announced on 3 June that a special committee would be set up to implement the decision to destroy the weapons, collected from Liberia’s former factions by ECOMOG and the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNOMIL). The arms and ammunition, stored in the former ECOMOG base in Monrovia, are to be destroyed on 26 July, Taylor announced on Monday in Abidjan, where he arrived during a West Africa trip that took him to Togo, Nigeria, Burkina and Cote d’Ivoire on 4-7 June. Taylor also called for the formation of a West African force to keep the peace in the subregion. “A true West African force would have all the characteristics of the 16 countries in the West African subregion,” he said. GUINEA: Army hits rebels in Sierra Leone Guinean soldiers killed up to 400 Sierra Leonean rebels in a recent cross-border raid, Guinean Defence Minister Dorank Diasseny said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday by Radio France International. Conakry took the action in retailiation for repeated Sierra Leonean rebel attacks, mostly on the Guinean border villages of Tassin and Mola. Diasseny said the assailants were an offshoot of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). However, RUF chief Foday Sankoh denied that there were any such splinter groups. GUINEA BISSAU: Vieira in Portugal Guinea Bissau’s former president, Joao Bernardo Vieira has arrived in Portugal via Banjul, following an arrangement brokered by the Gambian government. Under the agreement the new government in Bissau allowed Vieira to leave the country for medical treatment abroad on condition that he return home to face trial. Meanwhile, the last of 712 ECOMOG peacekeeping troops from Benin, The Gambia and Togo have left Guinea Bissau for home, ECOWAS said in a statement on Monday. The troops were deployed in Guinea Bissau in February to implement a peace agreement reached in November 1998 between the self-styled Military Junta and forces loyal to Vieira. Army chief warns Meanwhile, Guinea Bissau’s new armed forces chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Verisimo Siabra Correia, said on Monday the government would not tolerate any attempt by outside forces to destabilise the country. He was speaking at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the army mutiny that finally ousted Vieira, AFP reported. Local analysts interpreted this remark as a reference to the intervention last year by Guinea and Senegal, which sent troops to back Vieira. NIGERIA: Possible cabinet officers named Nigeria’s Senate this week released 49 names awaiting its approval as members of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government, news reports said. Senate President Evans Enwerem said on Wednesday the list, which Obasanjo submitted on Friday, included seven women, former ministers, retired army officers and members of opposition parties. Armed forces purge Beginning a long-awaited crackdown on the military, Obasanjo has retired about 150 ranking officers from the armed forces who have held political office at the state and federal levels. The government also released a list of missing money and ill-gotten property worth at least US $1 billion seized from the family of late military ruler General Sani Abacha, and close aides of his, including former security adviser Ismaila Gwarzo and ex-Finance Minister Anthony Ani. Warri Obasanjo has also been busy on another front. He travelled on Friday to Warri to meet leaders of the three warring ethnic groups there, the Ijaw, Urhobo and Itsekiri, some of whom he met in Abuja on Wednesday. Around 200 people have reportedly died since the end of May in intercommunal clashes in and around the south-eastern town, where a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on 6 June after heavy shooting and destruction of property by youths armed with bazookas, grenades and automatic rifles, ‘The Guardian’ newspaper of Lagos reported on Tuesday. The conflict, sparked by the location of a local government office, has to do with control over resources in the area. In another effort to pacify Niger Delta communities, Obasanjo created a Special Project Division (SPD) to plan the development of services such as electrification, environmental protection, sanitation, education, housing and transport in the Niger Delta, according to ‘The Guardian’. MOSOP welcomes rights probe Meanwhile, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) - a minority rights group that used to be led by the late Ken Saro-Wiwa - said on Monday it welcomed the creation by Obasanjo of a panel to probe rights abuses committed between 1994 and 1999. MOSOP said Obasanjo needed to give the panel, led by a former Supreme Court judge, “a mandate to investigate killings which occurred in Ogoni” under the Abacha administration. Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists were hanged after a trial by a military tribunal on murder charges. Senate vows to repeal obnoxious laws Meanwhile, Senate President Evan Enwerem pledged on Tuesday to repeal all laws and decrees that contradict democratic norms, ‘The Guardian’ of Lagos reported on Wednesday. This follows a request by the Constitutional Rights Project for the National Assembly to scrap 56 decrees issued by the military. On 4 June, Obasanjo called on the Assembly to repeal or amend all laws inconsistent with democracy. In a speech to both the Senate and the House of Representatives, he also presented his blueprint for ending corruption, revamping the economy, and rehabilitating the country’s badly battered infrastructure. CHAD: Rebel leader vows to take capital by end of year Chadian rebel leader Youssouf Togoimi of the Mouvement pour la democratie et la justice au Tchad (MDJT) said this week that his forces will be in the capital N’Djamena by the end of the year, according to an interview in the weekly ‘Jeune Afrique’ magazine. Togoimi, a former minister of defence, said that his forces had taken over a number of towns and military outposts in the north of the country and controlled all access to the mountainous Tibetsi region, according to ‘Jeune Afrique.’ He said that his troops were in a position to take the northern towns of Bardai or Zouar but preferred to wait for the government troops to surrender. Chadian Communications Minister Moussa Dago told IRIN on Tuesday that his government was “not worried as Togoimi has made several similar declarations in the past”. COTE d’IVOIRE: Regional peacekeeping school opened A Franco-Ivoirian centre to train African peacekeepers was inaugurated on Monday in Zambakro, some 220 km north of Abidjan, a senior Ivorian army officer told IRIN. The official said on Tuesday that the FF 16-million centre was paid for by France and consisted of command and communications centres, classrooms, and mess halls. The centre will initially accommodate 20 officers to be trained as peacekeeping observers. Others will later be trained as battalion and brigade headquarters chiefs of staff. Although soldiers will first be invited from West Africa, the official said, personnel would later be accepted from any African country. The centre, the first of its kind in Africa, is part of France’s programme to increase Africa’s capacity at peacekeeping. GHANA: Dozens drown in lake About 70 people are feared drowned after their overloaded boat sank in Lake Volta on Friday 4 June, news reports said. Ghana’s ‘Daily Graphic’ reported the boat, carrying 90 passengers, sank two nautical miles from its destination some 500 km from the capital, Accra. AFP reported that some 25 survivors told police the boat was overloaded with agricultural produce and livestock when it ran against high winds. Two similar accidents occurred in the lake in 1994 and 1995, AFP said. Tema-Akosombo road tarred A 78-km road linking the harbour city of Tema to the inland port at Akosombo has been commissioned, Ghana’s Joy FM radio reported on Tuesday. The road was asphalted with a 23.8-billion-deutsche mark loan from Germany and Ghana-government funding. First built in 1963, it serves landlocked Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Another road, from Tema to Sogakope and Aflao on the Togolese border, will also be rehabilitated from a DM 90-million German loan-and-grant package, the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation reported on 4 June. The money, of which DM 50 million will be a grant, will also go towards the Takoradi Technical Institute, transport and improving water supplies in the Eastern and Volta regions. NIGER: Opposition demands investigation into massacre The opposition Front Democratique du Nouveau (FDR) in Niger has called, in a letter to the Ministry of Justice, for the setting up of an independent commission of enquiry into a mass grave found on Boultoungoure Island in Lake Chad, according to ‘l’Alternative’ newspaper in Niamey. The grave contained the bodies of some 150 ex-FDR rebels from the Toubou ethnic minority. They were killed more than two months after a peace agreement was signed in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, between the FDR, a former rebel group, and the government. SENEGAL: Rebel leader denies federation plan The leader of the Mouvement des Forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC), Abbe Diamacoune Senghor, has dismissed talk of a federation between Senegal’s troubled Casamance area, Guinea Bissau and The Gambia. In a statement published on Monday in Dakar’s ‘Sud Quotidien’ newspaper, Senghor distanced himself from a federation call made by Mamadou Nkrumah Sane, the movement’s spokesman in Paris. “As Secretary-General of the MFDC I would like to say that the MFDC officially disassociates itself from these comments which commit no one but the author,” Senghor said. A media source in Dakar told IRIN this was the first time divisions between sections of the MFDC had been made public. MALI: Ruling party wins local elections The ruling Alliance pour la democratie au Mali (ADEMA) has won recent local elections with 61.5 percent of the vote, Reuters reported. The elections, held in May in Mali’s southern regions and on 6 June in the north, concluded a process of legislative, presidential and municipal polls started two years ago.