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

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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 354
21 - 27 October 2006


CONTENTS:

DRC: I will not fight if I lose election - Bemba
DRC: Militiamen still taxing civilians
DRC: Two of Kabila's killers recaptured
BURUNDI: Bid to resolve land dispute under way
BURUNDI: Gov't studying report by human rights group
TANZANIA: Zanzibar destroys more eggs to keep bird flu at bay
UGANDA: Dispute over truce terms holds up peace talks
KENYA-SOMALIA: Camps cannot cope with Somali refugee influx, official says


DRC: I will not fight if I lose election - Bemba

Congolese Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba has said he will not return
to war if he loses in a free and fair second-round presidential poll due
on Sunday.

"I will accept the decision of the ballot," he said on Thursday in the
capital, Kinshasa. Bemba, a former rebel leader, is running against the
incumbent. President Joseph Kabila failed to attain the 51 percent of
the vote in the first ballot needed to avoid a run-off.

Bemba also said he had cancelled a campaign rally scheduled for Friday
in Kinshasa for security reasons. "I do not want bloodshed in this city,
for which I will be blamed," he said. At least 13 people, including some
policemen, were killed during one of Bemba's campaign rallies on 27 July
in Kinshasa, according to the police. At least one million people fled
Kinshasa after the violence.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56089]

[Also on the Net:
European security forces vigilant ahead of polls:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56049]


DRC: Militiamen still taxing civilians

Fighters allied to a former militia leader, who has been integrated into
the national Congolese army, continue to tax civilians in the volatile
northeastern district of Ituri, a local chief has said.

The Front des nationalistes et integrationnistes militiamen, whose
leader - Peter Karim - was made a colonel in the national army in
October, have targeted civilians in Walendu Pitsi in Djugu Territory,
their stronghold.

"At least [US] $1,400 is being collected in monthly taxes from markets
in Bale, Dhera and Libi," the chief, who declined to be named, said on
Thursday. These markets are nearly 110 km northeast of Bunia, the main
town in Ituri.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56079]


DRC: Two of Kabila's killers recaptured

Two of the men convicted of killing President Laurent-Desire Kabila, who
escaped from jail on Tuesday, have been recaptured, a military officer,
who requested anonymity, said on Wednesday.

Military judges have launched an inquiry into the escape by 11 people
convicted of killing President Laurent-Desire Kabila, Attorney-General
Mukenda Tshimanga said.

"President Laurent-Desire Kabila's former guard and secret-service
agents were among the escapees," he said.

The convicts escaped from the Makala Penitentiary and Re-Education
Centre in the capital, Kinshasa, but two were later recaptured,
according to prison officials.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56059]


BURUNDI: Gov't studying report by human rights group

The government is studying a report by the US-based Human Rights Watch
(HRW), detailing extrajudicial killings, and will respond to the claims
in due course, government spokesman and Information Minister Ramadhan
Karenga said on Thursday.

"The government will give its position later," he said in the capital,
Bujumbura.

He was reacting to the report released by HRW on Wednesday. It stated
that over the past year, agents of Burundi's national intelligence
services had been implicated in at least 38 extrajudicial executions and
more than 200 arbitrary arrests, some involving torture.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56075]


BURUNDI: Bid to resolve land dispute under way

Representatives of Burundian refugees who fled civil war in the country
in 1972 on Monday met residents of the southern Makamba Province who had
taken over their land, in a bid to resolve the conflict.

"They are attempting to find a solution to the conflict by addressing
the issue together," Reverien Ndikuriyo, governor of Makamba Province,
said at the beginning of the three-day meeting in Makamba town.

He said about 207,000 Burundian refugees live in several areas in
western Tanzania and that some of them had been making cross-border
trips seeking to evict those settled on their land.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56041]


TANZANIA: Zanzibar destroys more eggs to keep bird flu at bay

Authorities in Zanzibar have incinerated another consignment of chicken
eggs smuggled from mainland Tanzania, in the hope of keeping their
islands free of avian flu.

"We seized the egg consignment of about 11 boxes imported from the
Tanzanian mainland commercial capital of Dar es Salaam," said Kassim
Gharib, the head of a task force formed by the Ministry of Agriculture,
Livestock, Natural Resources and Environment.

The task force was established to ensure that bird flu does not spread
to Zanzibar, two semi-autonomous islands that form part of the Republic
of Tanzania.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56048]


UGANDA: Dispute over truce terms holds up peace talks

Disagreement over the terms of a revised truce accord between the
Ugandan government and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has held
up peace talks between the two sides in the southern Sudanese city of
Juba, officials said on Thursday.

The LRA has insisted Ugandan troops deployed to southern Sudan either be
withdrawn or cantoned, and that rebel forces assemble in only one site,
rather than two, near Sudan's border with the Democratic Republic of
Congo, according to Gen. Wilson Deng, a senior mediator from the
southern Sudanese government. However, the spokesman for the Ugandan
government delegation at the talks, Capt Paddy Ankunda, said the new LRA
demands were "ambiguous and diversionary" and that the government would
reject them.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56070]


KENYA-SOMALIA: Camps cannot cope with Somali refugee influx, official
says

The three refugee camps in Dadaab in Kenya's Northeastern Province do
not have the facilities to cater for the influx of refugees from
Somalia, an official of the United Nations refugee agency said on
Thursday.

"Ideally, the Dadaab camps should accommodate 60,000 people but at the
moment there are 160,000," Eddie Gedalof, the UNHCR representative in
Kenya, said in Nairobi.

"The camp is crowded, with a family of 10 sharing a single tarpaulin
tent," Baarlin Abukar, a UNHCR field assistant based in Dadaab, added.
The UN launched a flash appeal on Thursday in the Kenyan capital,
Nairobi, for Somali refugees in Kenya.

[Full story:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=56076]


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