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 West Africa

Tel: +225 22-40-4440
Fax: +225 22-41-9339
e-mail: irin-wa@irin.ci


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 101
01 - 07 December 2001


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Fighting continues in parts of the northwest
SIERRA LEONE: Uphill struggle for disarmament in the east
GUINEA-BISSAU: Opposition sceptical about reported coup attempt
TOGO: Preparations for parliamentary elections underway
NIGER: Grain surplus recorded, government says
NIGERIA: Niger Delta development to be discussed
GUINEA: ADF support for sustainable social development
GHANA: Thousands displaced, many killed in communal clashes
WEST AFRICA: UN plans to set up West Africa office
WEST AFRICA: Media news - Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo, Gambia

LIBERIA: Fighting continues in parts of the northwest

Fighting between government troops and dissidents continued this week in
Lofa County, northwestern Liberia, according to various reports. However,
calm returned to parts of the adjacent county of Gbarpolu, enabling aid
workers to go back to camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from
which they had pulled out.

In Lofa, the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) recaptured the towns of Foya
and Belle Yella from Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy
(LURD) dissidents, Radio Liberia International (RLI), a pro-government
radio, reported on Friday. It said that in the fight for Foya, the AFL
killed 27 members of the LURD, which has been fighting government forces
in Lofa off and on since 1998.

RLI said a senior LURD commander was captured and two others were wounded.
Government forces destroyed two troop carriers and anti-aircraft guns
belonging to the rebels, it added. The radio station quoted Defence
Minister Daniel Chea as saying that another town in Lofa, Kolahun, was
partially occupied by dissidents and was being besieged by the Liberian
armed forces.

However, the Deputy Minister of National Security, Emmet Ross, who is also
a senior military intelligence officer, has been declared missing in
action after a convoy in which he was travelling was ambushed in Lofa.
Three of his junior officers are also missing, RLI said.

In Gbarpolu County, just south of Lofa, relief workers have returned to
IDP camps which they had fled last week. Save the Children's Fund (SCF)
went back to Bopolu camp after an SCF assessment team which went to the
camp found that the situation had returned to normal, SCF programme
director Jane Gibreel told IRIN. She said SCF had also gone back to
Jenemanna camp.

Bopolu hosted about 2000 IDPs before last week's fighting. Their number
has now been swollen by about 1,887 more people who fled clashes in areas
farther north such as Belle Fassama, Gibreel said. Belle Fassama is 100 km
north of Bopolu.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Kenzo Oshima expressed alarm this week
about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gbarpolu. He said the
displacement caused by the fighting had strained the Bopolu camp's already
inadequate resources. Humanitarian agencies operating in Liberia do not
have enough resources, he added, and might have to cease their operations
at the end of the year. Oshima called on donors to fund the 2002
inter-agency humanitarian appeal for Liberia.

SIERRA LEONE: Uphill struggle for disarmament in the east

Pro-government Civil Defence Forces (CDF) militiamen continued to disarm
this week in the districts of Kailahun and Kenema in eastern Sierra Leone.
Former Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels began disarming in
Kailahun, only to stop after two days.

Kenema and Kailahun are the last two districts that remain to be disarmed
in Sierra Leone.

A total of 366 former fighters of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
handed over their weapons on Tuesday and Wednesday in Kailahun, UN Mission
in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) spokesperson Margaret Novicki told IRIN on
Friday. However, they stopped abruptly for reasons which remained unclear
although, according to Novicki, there may have been some confusion among
rank-and-file RUF over whether or not they had been given the green light
to disarm. "I believe they started without instructions from higher
authorities and have now decided to wait," she said.

In Daru town, which is also in Kailahun District, 795 pro-government Civil
Defence Forces (CDF) forces had disarmed as of Thursday, the UN reported.

In Kenema District, no RUF rebels had reported for disarmament in the
diamond mining centre of Tongo Field, Novicki said. In Kenema Town, on the
other hand, 147 CDF had disarmed as of Thursday. However, according to a
BBC report on Thursday, some CDF were refusing to continue disarming in
Kenema until eight of their colleagues, who are facing murder charges,
were released.

RUF rebels in the east had refused to disarm because they were unhappy
over a number of issues including the outcome of a recent National
Consultative Conference and the continued detention of their leader, Foday
Sankoh. UN officials were having discussions with rebel leaders to try and
resolve outstanding issues "which we expect will be sorted out in the near
future," Novicki said.

According to UNAMSIL, more than 37,000 ex-combatants in 10 of Sierra
Leone's 12 districts have disarmed. At a meeting on Wednesday with Hans
Dahlgren, the EU's special representative to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone, senior UN official Oluyemi Adeniji said the most crucial task
facing Sierra Leone was reintegrating ex-fighters into society.

Adeniji, who is the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in
Sierra Leone, appealed to international donors, including Canada and the
European Union (EU), for help with the reintegration of former combatants,
UNAMSIL reported. He also noted that funds were needed for the
reconstruction and rehabilitation of roads, which would create jobs for
ex-combatants.

Dahlgren pledged the EU's continued political support to UNAMSIL and
financial assistance for Sierra Leone's disarmament, demobilisation and
reintegration programme, UNAMSIL reported.

Earlier in the week, Adeniji told a high-level Canadian delegation that
the ex-combatants were receiving re-insertion benefits but that these were
not enough. The visiting delegation was headed by Lt-Gen Romeo Dallaire,
the Special Advisor on War-Affected Children to the Canadian Minister for
International Cooperation.

Meanwhile, the Paris Club is to cancel about US $72 million dollars owed
by Sierra Leone under a restructuring agreement expected to reduce the
country's debt service to bilateral creditors for 1 October 2001 to 30
September 2004, from around US $180 million to about US $45 million.

GUINEA-BISSAU: Opposition sceptical about reported coup attempt

Guinea Bissau's government reported this week that it had foiled a coup
attempt by members of the military but Internal Affairs Minister Alamara
Nhasse failed to convince parliament on Wednesday that the alleged coup
attempt actually did take place. Opposition members demanded instead that
he produce evidence to back the government's claim, which he promised to
do.

Nhasse gave no details of the number of people arrested in connection with
the reported coup attempt, who were said to include a former deputy head
of the armed forces, and a former head of the navy.

Portuguese media, including the Diario de Noticias daily and Lusa news
agency, reported opposition leaders as expressing scepticism. "When plots
are discussed, we soon think of invention and this is a device already
used during the regime of Kumba Yala", an opposition source was quoted by
LUSA as saying.

TOGO: Preparations for parliamentary elections underway

As preparations for parliamentary elections in March 2002 got underway in
Togo, a review of voters' registers was scheduled to begin on Friday. The
first round of the polls is to take place on 10 March, while the second
would be held two weeks later. According to a presidential decree issued
on Tuesday, the revision of the voters' rolls would continue until 16
December, news agencies reported. The polls are meant to replace a 1999
legislative election which the opposition boycotted after accusing the
government of rigging a presidential poll in mid-1998.

NIGER: Grain surplus recorded, government says

Niger harvested a cereal surplus of nearly 300,000 mt this year, The
PanAfrican News Agency (PANA) reported a government statement as saying.
This contrasts strongly with a cereal deficit last year that affected more
than one-third of Niger's 10 million inhabitants, forcing thousands of
people to leave their villages in search of food.

NIGERIA: Niger Delta development to be discussed

The development of the Niger Delta is to come up for discussion at a major
conference to be held in Port Harcourt, the main town in southeast
Nigeria, on 10-12 December. Meanwhile, police in Rivers State, which is
also part of the Delta, on Tuesday broke up a protest by the National
Youth Council of Ogoni People (NYCOP) on the grounds that it was
unauthorised. NYCOP was protesting against the inability of the state
parliament and of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDCC) to deliver
on promises to improve the lives of the state's people.

GUINEA: ADF support for sustainable social development

The African Development Fund (ADF) has approved a loan of about US $25.56
million and a grant of just under US $2.24 million for a sustainable
social development project in Upper and Central Guinea.

The objective of the project is to help reduce poverty by supporting the
implementation of Guinea's National Poverty Reduction Strategy and enhance
governance at the local government level, the African Development Bank
(ADB) said. It seeks to facilitate access by the poor to basic
socio-economic services and develop productive capacities, especially
those of women and youths.

The project will support 57 urban districts and rural communities in
preparing and implementing sustainable development programmes. It will
help build, rehabilitate and equip some 400 small community facilities and
around 30 feeder roads, provide functional literacy education for 150,000
people, and train 1,000 groups in community life. Around 30,000 people are
to receive training in entrepreneurship, appropriate technologies and
micro-project management.

Some 80,000 poor people, 60 percent of them women and youths, will receive
microcredits to carry out income-generating activities.

The ADF is part of the ADB group.

GHANA: Thousands displaced, many killed in communal clashes

Over 50 people were reported killed and many others injured between Sunday
and Tuesday in fighting between members of rival ethnic groups in Bawku,
northeastern Ghana, police in Accra told IRIN. Over 5,000 people fled the
town, which is 880 km from Accra and has a population of 100,000. Property
was also destroyed in the clashes, reportedly sparked by a dispute between
two individuals. This week's incidents came just a year after clashes
between the two groups during presidential and parliamentary polls in
December 2000. According to the police, 30 people had died in last year's
clashes.

WEST AFRICA: UN plans to set up West Africa office

The United Nations plans to establish a West Africa subregional office in
Dakar, Senegal, in January for three years. It would be run by a Special
Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa.

"Among its tasks, the Office would assist the work of the Economic
Community of West African States and the Mano River Union (Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone). It would also carry out good offices roles and special
assignments in countries of the subregion on Mr. Annan's behalf, including
in conflict prevention and peace-building efforts, as well as report to
Headquarters on key developments of subregional significance," the UN news
service reported.

WEST AFRICA: Media news from Liberia, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo

In Liberia, two dailies that were closed by the authorities on 20 November
were back on the newsstands this week, diplomatic sources in Monrovia told
IRIN on Tuesday. According to the government, The News and the Monrovia
Guardian had been closed because of tax arrears.

In Sierra Leone, the Independent Media Commission has approved 21 of the
country's 60 newspapers, the Sierra Leone Expo Times reported on its
website on Monday. It quoted the Commission as saying that the approved
periodicals still had to formalise their status with the registrar general
and the income tax department.

Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF) said on Monday that it feared a new law
increasing the tax payable by private newspapers would cause smaller
papers to go under. Parliament recently adopted the law.

In Togo, RSF described the government's suspension on 29 November of two
call-in programmes run by a private station, Radio Victoire, as "an attack
on press freedom".

And in The Gambia, the International Press Institute (IPI), protested to
Gambian President Yahya Jammeh on 28 November against the detention by the
national intelligence agency of Alhagie Mbye of the Independent, a local
daily. Mbye was arrested on 21 November after claiming in an article that
thousands of Senegalese were on the voters' lists for The Gambia's
presidential elections, held on 18 October.


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Email: IRIN-WA@irin.ci

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