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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 104
22 - 28 December 2001


CONTENTS:

AFRICA: UNEP project to assess alternative energy potential
EAST AFRICA: 53 Turkana killed in firefight with rustlers
BURUNDI: Army claims capture of rebel base, killing hundreds
TANZANIA: BAe licence granted but issue not closed
KENYA: Police reservists disarmed in Tana River
RWANDA: Belgian police arrest genocide suspects
UGANDA: Rights groups urges engagement with western areas
DRC: WFP assists victims of heavy rain
DRC-RWANDA-UGANDA: Crisis group asks UN to warn Rwanda, Uganda

AFRICA: UNEP project to assess alternative energy potential

Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya are among 13 developing countries selected for a
pioneering project launched last week by the United Nations Education
Project (UNEP) to pinpoint some of the world's best solar and wind power
sites.

Experts were convinced that the project, called the Solar and Wind Energy
Survey Assessment (SWERA), would prove that the potential for deploying
solar panels and wind turbines in these countries - and others - was far
greater than currently supposed, the UN agency reported.

"While the costs of renewable energies like solar and wind have been
tumbling in recent years, obstacles remain to their widespread deployment,
particularly in developing countries," Klaus Toepfer, the UNEP Executive
Director, said. "If we can accelerate the deployment of renewable energy,
we can not only bring down the costs but also help in the fight against
global warming and poverty."

The SWERA project will considerably reduce uncertainties surrounding the
technical details and economic returns on solar, wind and thermal energy
investments in these 13 developing countries and elsewhere, said Tom
Hamlin, Climate Change Task Manager in the UNEP/Global Environment
Facility (GEF) coordination unit based in Nairobi, Kenya. The GEF - a
joint programme of UNEP, the United Nations Development Programme and the
World Bank - is to provide almost US $7 million of the $9.3 million
secured to fund a pilot, three-year phase of the project. SWERA aims to
bridge the knowledge gap so potential investors can know, with a great
deal of accuracy, the locations where they can secure a good and
reasonable return. Its findings will be linked with a Geographical
Information System so that prospective developers can pinpoint precise and
promising locations on the Internet. [Full report at:
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18198]

EAST AFRICA: 53 Turkana killed in shoot-out with rustlers

Police in Kenya have reported the killing of 53 Turkana pastoralists in
Lokitaung, Turkana District, northwestern Kenya, by a large group of armed
cattle rustlers, believed to be from "a neighbouring country".

A deputy police spokesman, Dola Indidis, said the herdsmen were killed
when 200 Turkana migrating from Lopotikor to Koringany in Nagapal location
of Lokitaung in search of pasture encountered at least 400 heavily armed
cattle rustlers, the East African Standard newspaper reported on Thursday.
It did not indicate when, in recent days, the attack had taken place.
Another 10 Turkana were wounded in a fierce exchange of gunfire between
the pastoralist herders and the rustlers, Indidis said. Six donkeys and 10
goats were taken, while 23 cattle had bullet wounds, he added. A combined
force of security personnel was pursuing the attackers but no arrests had
been made, the report quoted Indidis as saying.

Meanwhile, Nairobi's Daily Nation newspaper reported on Tuesday that eight
people had been killed when suspected cattle rustlers from Uganda raided a
village in Turkana District last week. The attackers drove away more than
1,000 head of cattle and goats, the newspaper reported, in what it termed
"a new wave of cattle rustling in northwestern Kenya". Francis Ewaton, the
ruling Kenya Africa National Union] MP for Turkana South told reporters in
Kitale that the raiders who invaded his constituency were escaping a
disarmament effort in Moroto and Karamoja, eastern Uganda.

The Karamojong have been widely criticised for carrying out armed cattle
raids against neighbouring districts in eastern Uganda, most notably in
Katakwi District, where some 80,000 people have been forced into
displacement camps. News reports suggest that the Karamojong disarmament
programme, started by President Yoweri Museveni on 2 December, has been
fairly successful so far, with thousands of illegally held weapons handed
in. [Full report at: Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18197]

BURUNDI: Army claims capture of rebel base, killing hundreds

Government troops have killed 515 rebels and captured their stronghold at
Tenga, a wooded area some 20 km northeast of the capital Bujumbura, after
a month-long battle which ended on Monday, the army spokesman, Colonel
Augustin Nzapampema, told IRIN.

"There is no more fighting but operations are continuing to consolidate in
the sector," he said on Wednesday. The government, Nzapampema said, had
lost 26 soldiers killed.

However, the spokesman for the rebel Front national de liberation (FNL),
Anicet Ntawuhiganyo, told the Associated Press agency (AP) that the
government claim was "pure propaganda".  "Since the beginning of the
fighting, we have lost 18 men and suffered 24 wounded," he said.

An official at the defence ministry told IRIN that there were no civilians
in the area of operations - where the rebels fought major battles with the
army between October and December 2000, according to local news reports.

Burundian Hutu rebels (backed by Rwandan Interharmwe Hutu militiamen and
the routed former Rwandan army, the ex-FAR - collectively known as the
Armee pour la liberation du Rwanda (ALIR) - have been fighting the
government since 1993. The rebels have recently stepped up their attacks
despite the inauguration on 1 November of a transitional power-sharing
government of Hutus and Tutsis.

TANZANIA: BAe licence granted but issue not closed

British Minister for International Development Clare Short has called for
a review of her government's export licence system in the wake of her
failure to prevent a licence being issued to a British aerospace firm, BAe
Systems, allowing the export to Tanzania of a controversial US $40 million
air traffic control system, the UK-based Guardian newspaper reported on
Monday.

Short had argued against her government granting the licence for a system
which a World Bank study and humanitarian organisations have said is a
waste of money for a country with a per capita income of less than $300 a
year. She was overruled in a cabinet committee row in which British Prime
Minister Tony Blair is understood to have backed the export plan.

Despite rules forbidding indebted countries from taking out commercial
loans, the IMF has allowed Tanzania to finance the deal with a $40-million
loan from the UK bank, Barclays, according to the Guardian. The loan is to
be repaid at rates higher than those normally offered to developing
countries by the IMF and World Bank, but below those normally charged by
banks such as Barclays, it stated.

Meanwhile, London's Financial Times reported on 22 December that the World
Bank was to step up pressure on Tanzania to buy a different air traffic
control system from the $40 million BAe Systems radar facility, in order
to deliver a system geared towards purely civilian needs rather than one
that includes a military capability.

Documents obtained by the newspaper suggested that the Tanzanian
government was willing to take advice from the International Civil
Aviation Organisation (ICAO) about possible changes to the BAe contract,
as proposed by the Bank, it reported. The ICAO said in October that the
BAe deal that "the system, as contracted, is primarily a military system
and can provide limited support to civil air traffic control purposes".
[Full report at: Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18193

KENYA: Police reservists disarmed in Tana River

The Kenyan government has disarmed 638 police reservists in Tana River
district, eastern Kenya, to consolidate an uneasy calm that has returned
to the area after violent clashes between the two communities in November
and December, the East African Standard newspaper reported on Monday, 24
December.

Moving out the reservists has helped security, though tensions in the
district are still high, according to humanitarian sources on the ground.
The government has also transferred some policemen belonging to the two
communities and serving in the area who were believed to have taken sides
in the skirmishes.

The local district commissioner, James Waweru, said 80 illegal guns
suspected to have been used during the clashes had also been recovered,
the Standard reported. Among the illegal guns recovered were 60 home-made
ones and an assortment of 20 assault rifles, and more than 14 people have
been arrested on suspicion that they had played a role in the tribal
feuds, he said. Waweru added that 108 people had been killed in the
clashes since March.

The conflict was initially triggered in December 2000 by a controversial
land adjudication programme, which could have given the Pokomo title deeds
to the land they cultivate. The Orma opposed the programme as it could
have restricted their access to vital grazing lands, according to regional
analysts. The land adjudication process had been scheduled to resume once
calm returned to the region, but Waweru said on Monday that the
adjudication process had been suspended indefinitely while the authorities
awaited the outcome of a peace initiative group, the Standard reported.
[Full report at: Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18162]

RWANDA: Belgian police arrest genocide suspects

Police in Brussels, Belgium, on 21 December arrested a former investigator
with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Joseph Nzabirinda,
who is charged with rape, genocide or complicity in genocide, and crimes
against humanity. This brings to 12 those arrested worldwide in 2001 at
the tribunal's request - the highest number of arrests since 1997, it
said.

Nzabirinda was the organiser of youth movements in Ngoma Commune, Butare
Prefecture and is alleged to have committed his crimes - together with
Joseph Kanyabashi - in the Sahera sector of Ngoma Commune, where thousands
of Tutsis were killed.

Kanyabashi, the former burgomaster (mayor) of Ngoma, is due to be brought
before the tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania. Nzabirinda's contract was
rescinded earlier in December after registry officials established that he
had presented false identity documents to the tribunal. Rwanda has alleged
that a number of genocide suspects are working or have worked for the
tribunal. However, the tribunal says it has not knowingly employed such
people. [Full report at:
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18144]

UGANDA: Rights groups urges engagement with western areas

There is general approval in western Uganda for government attempts to
tackle the armed rebellion by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), both
through an offensive by the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF) and
offering an amnesty to those wishing to surrender, according to a new
report published by the Kampala branch of the UK-based organisation
African Rights.

However, the general population feels vulnerable and neglected, leaving
"an undercurrent of dissatisfaction", which will not be easy to eradicate
and requires commitment on the part of government and donors, it added.

The ADF has been undermined and depleted by the joint impact of the
amnesty and military action, according to African Rights. It had also been
weakened by the withdrawal of Sudanese government support, in line with a
reconciliation agreement with Kampala, humanitarian sources told IRIN.

However, there are fears that the group might increasingly resort to urban
terrorism, as it did in Jinja, southeastern Uganda, in July, and in the
capital, Kampala, on other occasions, according to African Rights. The
legacy of the rebellion - land mines killing and maiming innocent
civilians, and people's lives still dominated by insecurity and
deprivation (whether in "protection camps" for displaced people, or their
home areas) - continued to cause suffering, it said.

While there were many organisations working on peace issues in northern
Uganda, the conflict in the west - primarily a war of brutality against
civilians, with no political agenda, and which had displaced some 170,000
people, mostly in Bundibugyo District - had received relatively little
attention from the government and donors, African Rights said.

"The government and donors have largely failed to recognise the extent of
the problems in the west, and should devote more time and resources in the
future in order to tackle the underlying causes of the conflict, and to
ease its consequences," it added. [Full report at:
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18150]

DRC: WFP assists victims of heavy rain

The World Food Programme (WFP) has distributed 48.7 mt of emergency aid to
3,000 victims of November's heavy rainfall in Mbandaka, the largest town
in the province of Equateur, northern Democratic Republic of Congo.

"It was imperative that WFP intervene because the victims had lost all
their possessions," Odette Kishabaga, the head of the agency's sub-office
in Mbandaka, said.

The aid, distributed on 21 and 22 December with help of the National Red
Cross, consisted of 30-day individual rations of maize flour, vegetables,
oil and salt. Local authorities are sheltering many of the homeless in the
town's former main prison, with many women and children sleeping on the
bare floor.

Humanitarian organisations and local officials in Mbandaka are evaluating
the situation in the affected parts of the town and surrounding villages.
"Such is the situation that the water sources have been infected,
heightening the risk of diseases such as enteritis, diarrhoea, and
cholera," WFP warned.

DRC-RWANDA-UGANDA: Crisis group asks UN to warn Rwanda, Uganda

With prospects of rivalry between the armed forces of Rwanda and Uganda in
North Kivu Province of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo still
obtaining, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has called on the UN and
the international community to tell both parties that any recurrence of
hostilities would lead to "sanctions with teeth, including immediate
suspension of all bilateral and multilateral aid".

Despite four summits this year between the Rwandan and Ugandan presidents,
Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, and the creation a joint verification
committee, the ICG said signs remained that the dispute could not be
resolved by the committee's "impromptu visits" to alleged training sites.

"Personal rivalry - not only between the two presidents - and regional
political leadership in East and Central Africa are involved," the ICG
said on 21 December. "Half a dozen determined military figures on both
sides have the capacity to take their countries at least to the brink, and
are under very little control by civilian institutions."

However, at a Kigali news conference on 19 December, Kagame said: "The
tensions that existed between the two countries a couple of months ago
have subsided. We will continue to work towards achieving a stable
relationship, and even aim to make relations as good as they were some
years ago." [Full report at:
Http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=18199]


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


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