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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 261
8 - 14 January 2005


CONTENTS:

DRC: Protests over possible election delays turn violent
DRC: South African president in talks Congolese political leaders
DRC: Progress made in disarming armed groups in Ituri
DRC: Aid funding needed to help victims of recent fighting
UGANDA-DRC: Congolese refugees at risk of diseases, UNHCR official says
UGANDA-SUDAN: Optimism that Sudanese peace deal could help pacify
   northern Uganda
RWANDA: Thousands in need of food aid, according to assessment
Rwanda: International prosecutor will resist public pressure
KENYA: Twenty-one die in inter-clan violence
TANZANIA: Britain offers debt relief to Tanzania


DRC: Protests over possible election delays turn violent

A comment by the head of the election commission on the possible delay of
national polls sparked violent demonstrations on Monday in Kinshasa,
capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The stone-throwing demonstrators burned tyres, blocking the city's main
streets while police shot in the air to disperse the crowds. Four people
were reported killed and several wounded.


Government spokesman Henri Mova Sakanyi blamed the violence on supporters
of long-time opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi. "Members of the Union
pour la democratie pour le Progres social tried to provoke disorder,"
Sakanyi said.

However, the party's national secretary, Jean-Baptiste Bonanza, denied his
party had anything to do with the demonstration.

DRC: South African president in talks Congolese political leaders

South African President Thabo Mbeki held talks on Wednesday with key
political leaders of the DRC in a bid to lessen tension within its
government and save the democratic transitional process from collapse.

Mkebi arrived in Kinshasa on Wednesday for meetings with President Joseph
Kabila and his four vice-presidents. One vice-president, Jean-Pierre
Bemba, has threatened to pull his movement out of the country's
transitional institutions if by 31 January preconditions for elections are
not met.

"In that case [...] we will withdraw from the transition and will leave
the country to those who supposedly want to run it in their way, and we
will call on the public to assume its responsibilities," Bemba said an
hour after his meeting with Mbeki.

Bemba heads the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo, one of the main
former rebels groups now represented in the transitional government. Some
of the preconditions to which he referred come under the South-African
sponsored all-inclusive accord signed in December 2002 by Congo's
belligerents, unarmed political groups and civil society. The cornerstone
of the accord is for power-sharing within the current transitional
government and its institutions, including the diplomatic corps, the
police, secret and other security services.

[On the Net: DRC: Officials trade blame for delaying elections
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45032 ]


DRC: Progress made in disarming armed groups in Ituri

The UN Mission in the DRC, MONOC, announced on Wednesday that efforts to
disarm combatants in the troubled northeast district of Ituri, were now
succeeding.

The number of combatants disarming "has increased and is growing", MONUC
spokesman Mamadou Bah said at a news conference in Kinshasa, the nation's
capital.

According to MONUC, 2,031 ex-combatants had handed in their guns by
Tuesday, and Bah said 12,664 arms and ammunition had been collected. Until
recently, demobilisation was reportedly floundering. Bah said the
situation had changed because of a number of factors.

"There is no doubt that operations by [MONUC] to destroy camps of militia
groups which had committed gross human rights abuses played a role," he
said. "Since these operations, particularly one at Ndrele, many militiamen
have spontaneously presented themselves in the transit camps to be
disarmed."

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45052 ]


DRC: Aid funding needed to help victims of recent fighting

The aid organisation Caritas International is appealing for US $900,000 to
help resettle thousands people displaced by renewed fighting in eastern
DRC.

Caritas said it was seeking funding for a two-month programme to "restore
some semblance of normalcy for families returning to pillaged homes". The
organisations said it planned to supply recipients with eating utensils,
clothing, and medicine as well as to help restore crop production.

MONUC estimates that 150,000 people in Kanyabayonga and other towns in the
province of North Kivu were displaced in December 2004 after units of the
Congolese army fought each.

"The Asia tsunami makes it more difficult to find funding for new
emergencies like these," a Caritas official told IRIN on Thursday.

Uganda-DRC: Congolese refugees streaming into western Uganda

Thousands of refugees who have been fleeing the Democratic Republic of
Congo since Tuesday to a UN refugee settlement in western Uganda's
Kyenjojo District are at risk of diseases, Stephen Gonah, a senior
protection officer from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), told IRIN.

He said the agency would on Saturday begin relocating the refugees to a
nearby settlement in Uganda called Kyaka II, Currently, he said, there
"may be over five thousand cramped up in a very small area at a landing
site of Nkondo on Lake Albert."


UGANDA-SUDAN: Optimism that Sudanese peace deal could help pacify northern
Uganda

The comprehensive peace accord signed on Sunday between the Sudanese
government and the southern-based Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army
(SPLM/A) should help resolve the 18-year war in northern Uganda, officials
said.

"The deal is surely a dawn of hope for us," Norman Ojwee, the chairman of
Kitgum District, told IRIN on Monday.

He said the deal meant there would be "effective control" in southern
Sudan, which would stop the mutual suspicions between Kampala and Khartoum
that resulted in support for each other's rebel groups.

Gulu District Chairman Walter Ochora said, "If the agreement is adhered to
by both parties, then it will have a tremendous impact on peace in
northern Uganda."

The Anglican bishop of Gulu diocese, Onono Onweng, added, "The Sudanese
will not tolerate any nonsense on their territory this time and this means
peace in our region."

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=45000 ]


RWANDA: Thousands in need of food aid, according to assessment

Some 122,000 Rwandan households will need 30,000 mt of food aid during the
next three months according to a joint national food security assessment
mission, FEWS NET reported.

"Food insecure households will need immediate food assistance through
direct food distribution," FEWS NET, a USAID-funded famine early warning
system, said.

Such aid, it said, would stop households from eating seed grains, or
selling breeding animals. This situation would further increase Rwandan's
vulnerability to future food-shortage shocks.

It said the assessment by the ministries of agriculture and of local
government, as well as by the UN World Food Programme, the Food and
Agricultural Organisation, FEWS NET, World Vision and Caritas, found that
"most food insecure" provinces were Kigali Rural (mostly in the central
Bugesera Region) and Kibuye, in the west.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=44985 ]


RWANDA: International prosecutor will resist public pressure

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, Hassan
Jallow, said on Friday he would not bow to pressure to prosecute members
of the Tutsi-led forces that overthrew the government in Rwanda which was
in power during the 1994 genocide.

The tribunal was created in 1994 to try key perpetrators of the genocide,
during which hundreds of thousands of members of Rwanda's Tutsi minority
and politically moderate were killed by the then armed forces and
extremist militias from the Hutu majority.

"I work independently to seek for the truth," Jallow said in Arusha,
northern Tanzania, in response to a recent threat by an expert academic
witness to suspend cooperation with the tribunal.

The professor, Filip Reyntjens who teaches courses on African Law and
politics and is the author of a number of books on Rwanda, said the RPF
also committed atrocities in the process of ousting the Hutu-led forces.
Jallow has not yet indicted any members of the Rwanda Patriotic Front or
its army which is credited with halting the 100-day genocide and
overthrowing the Hutu-led government.


KENYA: Twenty-one die in inter-clan violence

Twenty-one people were killed in inter-clan violence in the Mandera
district of Kenya's Northeastern Province during the past week, police
said on Monday.

Violence flared up on 2 January between the Garre and Murule clans, which
are both Kenyan Somali, police spokesman Jaspher Ombati told IRIN.

"Nine people were killed yesterday and it is believed that it was a
retaliation following the first attack on the 2nd of January when 12
people died," he said. The violence has taken place around the town of El
Wak.

Eight people were wounded during Sunday's attack and several of them were
airlifted to the nation's capital, Nairobi, for medical treatment after
receiving life-threatening gunshot wounds, Ombati said. He declined to
mention the exact cause of the violence, saying a team of investigators
had been sent to the area.

The media reported that the dead included women and children, and that
Sunday's victims were killed when a gang of armed raiders sprayed
residents of a village with bullets as they slept in their homesteads.

Much of Kenya's Northeastern Province is arid and notoriously lawless,
with bandits often carrying out attacks. However, the latest clashes seem
to have been triggered by disputes of pasture and water points among the
region's livestock herders, according to some sources.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=44990 ]


TANZANIA: Britain offers debt relief to Tanzania

Britain signed a US $74-million debt relief package with Tanzania on
Friday. The deal was initialed in Dar es Salaam by Tanzanian Finance
Minister Basil Mramba and his Tanzanian counterpart, Gordon Brown, who is
on a weeklong tour of eastern and southern African countries.

"We want developed nations to support developing countries like Tanzania,"
Brown had said at a reception on Thursday, after inspecting health and
education programmes in the central region of Dodoma.

Under the accord, Britain will pay 10 percent of Tanzania's debt service
to multilateral institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank and the African Development Bank.


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