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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 273
2 - 8 April 2005


CONTENTS:

DRC: UN agency expresses concern over thousands of children in armed
   groups
DRC: Rwandan militias clash with army troops
DRC: Thousands displaced after Mayi-Mayi, army clash
CONGO: DDR office opens in Pool region
RWANDA: Officials must appear before traditional courts, Kagame says
BURUNDI: Camps with low refugee populations to close
BURUNDI: Polls body to revise voter lists
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: 17 MPs elected in 1st round poll
TANZANIA: Violence in Zanzibar stops voter registration
UGANDA: NGOs suggest new ceasefire in north
AFRICA: Transport costs a trade barrier for the continent


DRC-RWANDA: Interview with FDLR leader, Ignace Murwanashyaka Full report

DRC: Insecurity creates food shortages in Ituri Full report


DRC: UN agency expresses concern over thousands of children in armed
groups

Despite 3,313 children being disarmed in the last six months in Congo's
northeastern district of Ituri, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) expressed
concerned on Monday over thousands others yet to be released by armed
groups.

The UNICEF child protection officer in the DRC, Trish Hiddleston, said the
agency was "deeply concerned" about the low numbers of girls who had been
released. UNICEF called on all armed groups to release, immediately, all
children irrespective of their role in the group.

Hiddleston said UNICEF estimated that in Ituri alone, at least 3,000
children were still in the hands of armed groups and that an even greater
number remained with other similar groups in the rest of the country.

UNICEF said the 3,313 who had left the armed groups had undergone a
disarmament and community reintegration process. Of these, child
protection agencies had received 399; 2,914 others - 2,353 boys and 561
girls - have undergone disarmament and reintegration in seven centres
across Ituri since September 2004.

Full
report


DRC: Rwandan militias clash with army troops

Provincial authorities in South Kivu, eastern DRC, said on Tuesday that
there had been fighting between Congolese troops and Rwandan Hutu
militias, known as Interahamwe, at a village 150 km north of the
provincial capital, Goma.

"Interahamwe had, as they often do it in this corner, attacked the
national Congolese army [known as FARDC]," Eugene Serufuli, the provincial
governor, told IRIN. "FARDC pushed them back and they dispersed in the
bush not far from Lusamabo village."

He said no assessment had been made of the fighting, which occurred on
Saturday in Miliki village, therefore casualty figures were unavailable.

The government army spokesperson was unavailable for comment. However, a
military spokesman for the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Col Domenica
Demange, said the mission had received contradictory information about the
fighting.

UN-supported Radio Okapi reported that earlier fighting between the
Interahamwe and the army caused confusion, and led to more exchange of
fire between two units of the Congolese army. The radio said soldiers of
the army's 8th Brigade thought they had been attacked and exchanged fire
with their colleagues who were pursuing Interahamwe militiamen.

Full
report


DRC: Thousands displaced after Mayi-Mayi, army clash

Nine women were killed and 5,300 civilians displaced in the southwestern
province of Katanga following fighting between government troops and
Mayi-Mayi militias, a UN official told IRIN on Wednesday.

The fighting took place on 17 March but information of the event reached
the capital, Kinshasa, late due to lack of communication with the village
of Konga, 446 km northwest of the provincial capital, Lubumbashi, where
the fighting took place.

An officer in charge of special investigations in the UN Mission in the
DRC (MONUC), Sonia Bakar, said a UN inter-agency meeting in Kinshasa on
Friday discussed the incident. "These people fled their village, heading
to Mitwaba, 60 km to the south, after a Mayi-Mayi attack," she said.

Full
report



CONGO: DDR office opens in Pool region

A branch office of the Republic of Congo's commission for the
reintegration of ex-combatants was opened on Saturday in Kinkala, the main
town in the troubled Pool Department.

The prefect of Pool, Michel Sangha, said the office would facilitate the
effective implementation of a disarmament, demobilisation and
reintegration programme under way in the area.

Opening the office on Saturday, the head of the national DDR Commission,
Michel Ngakala, said 450 ex-combatants registered in a previous
disarmament programme had already undergone the process.

The commission launched the Pool's DDR emergency programme on 5 March. The
commission was set up following the signing of ceasefire agreement in
November and December 1999 between the government and Ninja rebels, led by
the Reverend Frederic Bitsangou, alias Pasteur Ntoumi. The Pool is the
stronghold of the Ninjas.

Full report


RWANDA: Officials must appear before traditional courts, Kagame says

Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on Thursday, for the fist time, that if
summoned members of his government must testify before traditional courts
hearing cases of the 1994 genocide.

"They must appear before these courts and speak the truth on what their
roles were during the killings." Kagame said. They "know what transpired
and must therefore speak it out."

He made the remarks while officiating at the reburial of 250 victims of
the genocide, near the hilltop village of Murambi, in the east of the
country. The dead were removed from mass graves, placed in individual
coffins and reburied in five trenches.

Full
report


BURUNDI: Camps with low refugee populations to close

A camp for Burundian refugees in northwestern Tanzania is due to close in
"a few weeks", as part of an effort to consolidate these facilities as
many occupants return home, according to an agreement between Burundi,
Tanzania and the UN refugee agency, UNHCR.

The 5,500 refugees at Karago Camp would relocate to the neighbouring
Mtendeli Camp towards the end of April. However, UNHCR said on Tuesday
that these refugees would continue to receive the same aid they were
getting in Karago.

Under the agreement, all Tanzanian camps with a refugee population of less
than 10,000 would be closed to consolidate camps amid the ongoing
repatriation programme for Burundian refugees.

UNHCR said more than 158,000 Burundian refugees had repatriated since it
started its voluntary return programme from Tanzania in March 2002. The
agency said it planned to help another 85,000 to return home in 2005.

Full
report


BURUNDI: Polls body to revise voter lists

Burundi's National Independent Electoral Commission, or CENI, will revise
voters' lists between 8 and 17 April, ahead of general elections due
before the end of the month, an official of the commission said on
Wednesday.

The CENI commissioner in charge of electoral operations, Liberate
Kiburago, said the process "notably consists of distributing voters cards
to those who did not get them during the referendum on the post-transition
constitution".

During the revision period, CENI would also register eligible voters who
failed to do so before the 28 February referendum on the constitution.
Moreover, CENI would transfer names of voters to polling stations of their
choice. During the referendum some people voted in stations they were not
native to due to various reasons such as travel, work stations and
residence out of their native homes.

Full
report


CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: 17 MPs elected in 1st round poll

The electoral commission of the Central African Republic (CAR) announced
on Sunday that 17 of 105 parliamentary seats were filled during the first
round of general elections.

The chairman of the Mixed Independent Electoral Commission, Jean
Willibiro-Sacko, said the rest would be contested during a second round of
elections, set for 1 May. A run-off presidential poll, pitting CAR leader
Francois Bozize against former Prime Minister Martin Ziguele, will also be
held on the same day.

Willibiro-Sacko said those elected to parliament in the first round
included former Prime Minister Jean-Paul Ngoupande; Mireille Kolingba, the
wife of former President Andre Kolingba; and a former Speaker of the
National Assembly, Luc-Apollinaire Dondon-Konamabaye, who served during
the administration of former President Angel-Felix Patasse.

A total of 909 candidates contested the first round of the legislative
elections.

Full
report


TANZANIA: Violence in Zanzibar stops voter registration

The electoral body in Tanzania's semi-autonomous island of Zanzibar
stopped registering voters on Tuesday following incidents of political
violence; including an attack on a registration centre near the capital,
Stone Town.

The Zanzibar Electoral Commission said voter registration was being
suspended for a few days to "avoid unnecessary friction".

The Zanzibar Urban West regional police commander, George Kizuguto, said
the home of the Civic United Front (CUF) leader, Abbas Muhunzi, was set
ablaze on Sunday. On Monday, a crowd of some 400 people attempted to break
into a voter registration centre. Unofficially, the Zanzibar police said
the people were CUF supporters disgruntled over what they claimed to be
voter registration fraud.

Tensions are rising between supporters of two main parties: the ruling
Chama Cha Mapinduzi and the CUF. Zanzibari voters are scheduled to take
part in national elections in October along with voters in the rest of
Tanzania.

Full
report


UGANDA: NGOs suggest new ceasefire in north

A group of NGOs working in war-torn northern Uganda lobbied the government
on Monday to offer a new ceasefire to the rebel movement, the Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA), as an incentive to re-establish peace talks.

In their statement, 38 national and international NGOs under the umbrella
group Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda lamented
the missed opportunity for peace late in 2004.

They said the only hope lay in a substantial ceasefire, which would enable
negotiators to build confidence and work together to plan a process for
long-term peace. They added that such a ceasefire should cover internally
displaced persons'(IDP) camps, where more then 1.5 million people, mainly
children and women, lived in appalling conditions.

Full
report


AFRICA: Transport costs a trade barrier for the continent

High transport costs are crippling African economies - more so than trade
tariffs imposed by rich nations, UN Under-Secretary-General Anwarul
Chowdhury said on Wednesday.

He told African transport ministers meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's
capital, that transport costs in Africa were up to four times higher than
tariffs imposed by countries like the US, Japan and the European Union.

At the African Union headquarters, he said that Africa's economic future
was intertwined with the continent solving its crumbling infrastructure
and transport crisis. Transport costs in African countries are twice those
in other developing nations in Asia or South and Central America,
Chowdhury said, and four times higher than in wealthy countries.

His comments came as African transport ministers discussed targets
necessary for the continent - the world's poorest - to achieve global
anti-poverty goals by 2015.

Full
report


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