U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Integrated Regional Information Network for Central and Eastern Africa

Tel: +254 2 622147
Fax: +254 2 622129
e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org


CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 90
8 - 14 September 2001


CONTENTS:

GREAT LAKES/CENTRAL AFRICA: UN postpones special session on children
GREAT LAKES REGION: Leaders condemn terrorist attacks on US
DRC: Mayi-Mayi want place in inter-Congolese dialogue
DRC: Kinshasa hands over 3,000 disarmed Hutu rebels to UN
DRC: UNHCR completes transfer of 3,000 Angolan refugees
DRC: Banyamulenge criticise inter-Congolese dialogue
DRC: Inter-Congolese dialogue web site launched
BURUNDI: Army spokesman outlines security situation
RWANDA: Appointment of ICTR deputy registrar
ROC: President, OAU leader condemn terrorist attacks on US
ROC: Appeal launched to save Central African forest
AFRICA: US-Africa business summit rescheduled


GREAT LAKES/CENTRAL AFRICA: UN postpones special session on children

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday postponed next week's Special Session
on Children in recognition of the terrorist attacks against the US on
Tuesday. Speaking from her agency's headquarters on Manhattan's East Side,
UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said "we are all touched by the
events that struck New York and the US on Tuesday. We strongly support the
General Assembly in its decision to postpone the summit on children. The
City of New York needs to focus its energies on more urgent matters right
now." In light of the fact that the summit was expected to bring more than
70 heads of state, hundreds of children, and thousands of other delegates
to New York starting this weekend, Bellamy thanked the thousands of
governments and NGOs that had devoted themselves to planning the special
session over the last 18 months, assuring them that their commitment would
pay off. "This is a postponement, not a cancellation," she affirmed. "The
General Assembly will reschedule this special session when the time is
right. World leaders have shown they want it, and the children of the
world surely deserve it."

The UN Special Session on Children was to have taken place from 19-21
September at the UN complex in New York City to review global progress for
children since 1990 and set new goals for the decade ahead. A UN report
released earlier this year indicated that many of the world's goals for
children, set at the 1990 World Summit for Children, had not been fully
achieved and that much work remained. Bellamy said the "unfinished
business" detailed in that report provided a clear roadmap for moving
forward immediately.

GREAT LAKES REGION: Leaders condemn terrorist attacks on US

Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre building in New York and
the Pentagon in Washington on Tuesday, Burundi President Pierre Buyoya
addressed a message of condolences to US President George W. Bush and the
American people. In the message, broadcast from Radio Burundi, Buyoya said
that "at this moment of very great hardships for the US administration and
the American people, we... offer our most grieved condolences and condemn
with all our energies that unspeakable barbarity".

Speaking on RTNC TV, DRC Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu said that
"it is with indescribable dismay that [President Joseph Kabila] has just
been informed about the serious tragedy being experienced by the American
people... Maj-Gen Kabila, president of the republic, expresses his total
solidarity with the US people and president."

In a message read on rebel-controlled RTNC in Goma, the leader of the
Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), Adolphe Onusumba Yemba,
extended "heartfelt condolences" to President Bush. He said: "RCD
members... are dismayed by the horror caused by the barbarism of a hidden
hand... The RCD... encourages the US government to track down the
ignominious perpetrators of the tragedy."

For his part, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said in a statement read on
Radio Rwanda: "We strongly condemn this cowardly crime and trust that the
perpetrators will be found and brought to justice..."

Tanzanian Prime Minister Frederick Sumaye was quoted by Radio Tanzania as
saying that "Such horrible and beastly acts against innocent people must
be condemned in the strongest possible terms... The world must unite and
fight them."

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda said on Radio Uganda: "We in Uganda
know very well the grievous harm that can be caused to society by
terrorists, having suffered for many years at the hands of [Joseph] Kony
[leader of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army] and the Allied Democratic
Forces terrorists supported by Sudan." Indiscriminate violence in the
pursuit of any cause must be condemned and terrorism in all forms needed
to be eradicated, he added.

Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya also condemned the attacks,
saying that terrorism could never be the basis for the solution of any
conflict, according to local media.

Meanwhile, Klaus Toepfer, UN Under-Secretary-General and Director-General
of the UN office in Nairobi, Kenya, said in a statement: "These terrorist
attacks in the United States have shocked me and they have shocked UN
staff here in Kenya. These acts of barbarism occurred on American soil,
but they were in fact an attack on civilisation, democracy and freedom
everywhere," he said.[see also IRIN report of 12 September headlined
"United Nations condemns world's worst terrorist attack" at:
http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN/index.phtml]

DRC: Mayi-Mayi want place in inter-Congolese dialogue

Mayi-Mayi tribal militias of the eastern DRC allied to the Kinshasa
government on Monday demanded a place at the inter-Congolese dialogue
beginning 15 October in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, AFP reported. Without
including the Mayi-Mayi "the peace process cannot lead to the desired
results", an operational commander of the Mayi-Mayi, General Joseph
Padiri, said in a statement released by his spokesman to AFP. "We ask that
we, the Mayi-Mayi, that's to say the people in arms, be represented by a
delegation forming 20 percent of the participants to the inter-Congolese
dialogue," Padiri's communique said, according to AFP. "Nobody else can
claim to represent the martyred people of provinces living in terror of
armies of occupation," added the text, dated Kivu and signed by Padiri's
spokesman, Anselme Enerunga.

Under the Lusaka peace agreement signed in 1999 by all parties to the DRC
war, the inter-Congolese dialogue is a key element to overall peace and
reconciliation. However, the Mayi-Mayi were not envisaged as participants
in the talks meant to bring together the Kinshasa regime, the political
opposition, rebel groups and representatives of civil society. According
to AFP, Padiri rejected a proposal from the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement
congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) rebel movement to hold talks among
various parties in North and South Kivu provinces as a prelude to the
national dialogue, dismissing it as a "manoeuvre" to "torpedo" the peace
process. "For many years, people in Kivu lived in harmony, and no ethnic
group took up arms against another. It's only the Rwandan immigrants who
have often taken up arms against us with the aim of exterminating us and
occupying our territory," AFP quoted Padiri's statement as saying.

Meanwhile, leaders of the Ugandan-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la
democratie - Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) rebel movement resolved at a
meeting held in Beni on 3 September to hold peace talks with Mayi-Mayi
tribal militias in order to incorporate their views in the inter-Congolese
dialogue. "The Mayi-Mayi need to be part of the dialogue even if it means
incorporating them as members of the RCD-ML. They are now too many to be
ignored. They made a proposal to us that they should be represented in the
dialogue and we cannot ignore them," self-proclaimed RCD-ML leader Mbusa
Nyamwisi told IRIN, adding that "we now know their leaders and we are
holding negotiations with them so that they can join us and we train them.
It is important that we do not leave them out, because they constitute a
security factor."

DRC: Kinshasa hands over 3,000 disarmed Hutu rebels to UN

Authorities in the DRC said on Thursday they had disarmed and handed over
3,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels to the UN mission in the DRC (MONUC), according
to AFP. Speaking on state radio, the DRC's security minister, Mwenze
Kongolo, reportedly said that with the handover, Kigali was no longer
justified in maintaining a military presence in the east of the country.
According to AFP, the DRC government claimed that the ethnic Hutu rebels
it handed over to MONUC were not former Interahamwe fighters or ex-Rwandan
soldiers (ex-FAR) responsible for carrying out the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Kongolo said the rebels were actually members of a group called the
Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), which claims to be a
political and military organisation with a base in Austria. The FDLR were
"refugees and other Rwandans in exile who organised themselves into small
armed groups to protect themselves from being exterminated by the Rwandan
army", Kongolo was quoted by AFP as saying.

Kongolo on Wednesday introduced the disarmed FDLR members to UN mission
commander Mountaga Diallo at a military base in the southeastern province
of Katanga, according to AFP. "There are no longer any armed Rwandans on
DRC territory under government control, and the disarmament of the FDLR is
an important step in our quest for peace. Rwanda has used the presence of
armed rebels in DRC as an excuse to justify its occupation of part of our
country," the minister was quoted as having said.

DRC: UNHCR completes transfer of 3,000 Angolan refugees

UNHCR announced on Tuesday that on 7 September it had completed the
transfer of more than 3,000 Angolan refugees from the southwestern DRC
border town of Kidompolo to six villages some 50 km inland deemed to be
more secure, including Zomfi, Zulu and Sadi. The refugees are part of a
group of nearly 10,000 Angolans who fled to the DRC in early August in the
wake of a UNITA offensive on the northern Angolan town of Beu. Most of the
refugees made the journey to the new settlements on foot because of
extremely poor road conditions. However, vulnerable refugees, including
young children, the sick, the elderly and the disabled were transported by
truck. Over the weekend, many of the refugees began constructing shelters
on half-hectare -plots set aside for them. UNHCR and partners will provide
the refugees with seeds, tools and other forms of aid over the next few
months. However, future support will be community-based and focus mainly
on health and education facilities in localities where refugees have
settled, UNHCR noted.

Meanwhile, an estimated 4,000 other Angolan refugees who arrived in the
DRC during August still remain in border areas, including some 2,000 in
the town of Kimvula, a remote area 120 km east of Kidompolo, where the
majority of the new arrivals have been gathered, and a similar number
scattered across several other villages. UNHCR has begun preparations for
the transfer of refugees from Kimvula to villages further from the border,
including Zulu, Zomfi and Sadi. More than 2,000 others have returned on
their own to their homes in areas around the town of Maquela do Zombo in
northern Angola. Before this recent influx, the DRC was hosting over
180,000 Angolan refugees. UNHCR is assisting over 70,000 of them in
Bas-Congo and Katanga provinces.

DRC: Banyamulenge criticise inter-Congolese dialogue

Francis Shyaka, President of Shikama - the Kivu Peace Initiative
(Shikama-KPI), a Banyamulenge organisation which recently issued 10
conditions for the restoration of peace in the DRC, and claims to
represent "thousands of members and sympathisers", told IRIN that "for us,
the political move adopted by the mediator in the Congolese crisis started
from the wrong footing, and the results will, unfortunately, not be
different from those of the Sovereign National Conference, which plunged
the DRC into the current violence and an unprecedented political roaming".
Calling the Congolese conflicts "inter-ethnic, horizontal and grassroots
among diverse components of the Congolese nation", Shyaka argued that the
"steps adopted from the top "are "contrary to democratic logic" - meaning
that the Congolese from Kivu had "refused to live together" and "are
hiding behind the inter-Congolese dialogue in the belief that they have
solved everything".

According to Shyaka, "the question of the status of Banyamulenge and other
minorities is not even on the agenda of the debates of the inter-Congolese
dialogue". He proposed that "the organisation of regional dialogues aimed
at studying the motives behind the human slaughter work together for the
success of the national inter-Congolese dialogue", because "it is
impossible to build a house on moving sand or democracy on ethnic hatred".

Shyaka told IRIN that Shikama-KPI is "non-violent, non-political, popular,
nonpartisan and nongovernmental", and "fights violence with nonviolence,
and the sword with peace" so as to "restore our people's dignity as part
of the Congolese nation." Shyaka said: "We are convinced that there will
never be peace in the countries of the Great Lakes without peace in the
DRC, and that cannot happen without peace in Kivu." Shyaka called for a
"frank and sincere dialogue" among the people of the Kivus in order to
"change their attitudes, behaviour and mentality with a view to living
together".

DRC: Inter-Congolese dialogue web site launched

The office of the facilitator of the inter-Congolese peace and
reconciliation dialogue on 9 September announced the launch of a new and
bilingual (French/English) web site at http://www.drcpeace.org that "will
enable the office of the facilitator to channel information not only to
all the actors involved in the process, journalists and experts, but most
importantly to the Congolese themselves." According to a statement from
the office of the facilitator (former Botswanan President Ketumile
Masire), the site contains the most recent information about the DRC, a
directory of updates, publications and reports that can be downloaded, and
includes an advanced research and navigation capacity. "The site will help
fill the information gap currently existing on the progress of the DRC
peace process," the statement noted.

BURUNDI: Army spokesman outlines security situation

The security situation is satisfactory in half the northern part of
Burundi, army spokesman Colonel Augustin Nzabampema said on Wednesday, but
warned that in the western Bujumbura and Bujumbura-Rural provinces armed
robberies were continuing, especially on the periphery of the capital,
with Buterere, Kinama and Kamenge zones currently the most insecure
places, Burundi news agency ABP reported. Referring to the northwestern
Cibitoke Province, Nzabampema noted the existence of "frank cooperation"
between the administration, population and security forces. In this
context, he pointed to last week's "neutralisation" of 200 "assailants"
who had attempted to infiltrate the province from the DRC.

In reference to Bubanza Province, also in the northwest, Nzabampema spoke
of infiltration attempts by armed groups in communes bordering Kibira and
Rukoko and in the communes of Musigati and Gihanga. In the central and
eastern provinces, he said security prevailed, but emphasised that armed
robberies were continuing near the Kibira forest, notably in the
west-central province of Muramvya and Kayanza in the north.

RWANDA: Appointment of ICTR deputy registrar

Former Malawian Justice Minister Lovemore Green Munlo has been appointed
deputy registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR),
the ICTR announced on 7 September. The appointment is effective
immediately, and Munlo is expected to start work next month.

Munlo was Malawi's justice minister between September 1993 and May 1994.
According to the ICTR, he was responsible for the repeal of repressive
laws passed during the 31 years of authoritarian rule of former Malawian
President Kamuzu Banda, and was instrumental in the amendment of Malawi's
constitution which led to the introduction of multiparty politics in the
country. Munlo also served as Malawi's deputy external affairs minister
between February 1992 and September 1993. Munlo previously held the post
of high court judge and chief public prosecutor.

ROC: President, OAU leader condemn terrorist attacks on US

Speaking to Radio France Internationale (RFI) in Brazzaville on Wednesday,
Republic of Congo (ROC) President Denis Sassou-Nguesso stated that "it is
with deep emotion that we have been following since yesterday very
terrifying and disturbing pictures from the United States, particularly
Washington and New York, as a result of indescribable acts perpetrated by
blind international terrorism, which we strongly condemn in all its
forms."

Meanwhile, recently-elected Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Secretary
General Amara Essy told RFI that the terrorist attack was "a moment of
great sadness not for the United States alone, but for Africa also, and
everyone. I think the monstrous character of the attack leads us to
condemn it firmly. We can only express our compassion to the American
people, because whatever the reason there is no justification for
terrorism. It is really a moment of very great sadness. Whatever the
reason, one cannot accept that innocent people pay with their lives; one
cannot accept that terrorism has the upper hand and destroys the democracy
we have been practicing day after day."

ROC: Appeal launched to save Central African forest

Biologist Dr Michael Fay of the New York-based Wildlife Conservation
Society (WCS) has made an impassioned appeal to save the Langoue Forest, a
pristine area of more than 600,000 acres within the Congo jungle in Gabon,
Business Wire reported on Tuesday. Speaking at a recent conference
sponsored by Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) held in
California, Fay indicated that US $3.5 million is needed immediately to
purchase the logging rights to the forest and return it to the public
domain. This is the first step in creating the Langoue National Park,
which will preserve the land.

Fay recently made a 15-month exploratory trek through a remote forest
corridor spanning the Republic of Congo (ROC), Central African Republic
(CAR), and Gabon, including the Langoue Forest, in order to systematically
survey the plant and wildlife in the region and to determine the human
impact of sparsely populated villages in the region. By documenting the
near-pristine wilderness of central Africa, Fay said he hopes to convince
the world of the importance of preserving the region. "My mission is to
raise the US $3.5 million needed to purchase logging rights to this forest
and to support legislation to make it a national park. Should this mission
fail, another magical place will vanish forever." [For more information on
this initiative, go to http://www.savethecongo.org]

AFRICA: US-Africa business summit rescheduled

Due to Tuesday's attacks on New York and Washington, the US-Africa
business summit has been rescheduled for 30 October to 2 November at the
Loews Philadelphia Hotel, the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA) announced
on Wednesday. According to CCA, the summit will be the largest gathering
of African government and business leaders ever to convene in the US
outside the UN. The summit was originally slated to take place in
Philadelphia from 16 to 20 September, with DRC President Joseph Kabila and
President Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the neighbouring Republic of Congo (ROC)
heading the roster of confirmed participants that also included over 1,400
delegates from all 53 African nations. "Our nation and the world need time
to mourn," said CCA President Stephen Hayes, "and many attendees would
have encountered considerable travel and other logistical difficulties. We
therefore believe that all participants in the US-Africa business summit
will be better served by this postponement." [For further information, go
to http://www.africacncl.org]

Nairobi, 14 September 2001


[IRIN-CEA: Tel: +254 2 622147 Fax: +254 2 622129 e-mail:
irin-cea@ocha.unon.org]


[This item is delivered in the "africa-english" service of the UN's IRIN
humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views
of the United Nations. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this
item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Reposting by commercial
sites requires written IRIN permission.]

Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The CIDI is wanting to gather information on public perceptions and
involvement in issues of public donations in response to international
incidents.  A survey has been prepared to collect information and is
found as a link at the top of www.cidi.org

It is noted as "Public Concepts About Disaster Donation" for those
prepared to review it and respond.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -


distributed by
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Center for International Disaster Information
Volunteers in Technical Assistance
                                          web: www.cidi.org
                                     listserv: www.cidi.org/listsub.htm
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Central/East Africa             www.cidi.org/humanitarian/irin/ceafrica