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 179
07 - 13 June 2003


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Talks continue in Ghana, displaced living in dire conditions 
CAMEROON: $49.7 million to buy back debt
COTE D'IVOIRE: More West African peacekeepers arrive
GHANA: Former President Jerry Rawlings questioned by police
NIGERIA: 15 killed in northeast religious riots
NIGERIA: Obasanjo names new military commanders
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Troops withdrawal from Bakassi discussed
GUINEA: Government stops opposition conference
MAURITANIA: Life returns to normal after coup attempt
SIERRA LEONE: FAO reports rising food production


LIBERIA: Talks continue in Ghana, displaced live in dire conditions

Talks between the Liberian government and rebels continued in the Ghanaian
town of Akosombo, 100 km north of the capital, Accra, as reports from
Liberia said the capital, Monrovia, was quiet for the third day on Friday.
But aid workers said the plight of thousands of displaced people,
including at least 30,000 living in a stadium, remained precarious.

"There are dead bodies in the main street and you can smell death in many
places," Alain Kassa head of MSF in Liberia said. Overcrowding, lack of
food, lack of clean water and a complete absence of sanitation,
MSF-Belgium warned, would favour a fast spread of disease.

France evacuated 534 foreigners, mainly international staff of relief
agencies, from Monrovia on Monday. They were transferred by military
helicopters to a French war ship which took them to Abidjan in neigbouring
Cote d'Ivoire on Wednesday.

The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said
fighters had looted at least six four-wheel-drive vehicles from various
relief agencies. Measles and diarrhoea had been reported in newly created
camps for the displaced in the city, OCHA added.

Fighting which intensified around Monrovia a week ago, died down on
Wednesday but IRIN counted 113 bodies lying in one street. On Wednesday
the Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) rebels
withdrew from Monrovia's western suburbs, which they had occupied a week
earlier, and President Charles Taylor told West African peace mediators
that he was willing to call for an immediate truce.

The Akosombo talks formally opened in Ghana on 4 June, but immediately
stalled following the eruption of fighting in Monrovia and Taylor's
indictment by a UN-backed Special Court in Sierra Leone for war crimes and
crimes against humanity for backing rebels who committed widespread
atrocities during Sierra Leone's 1991-2001 civil war.

On Thursday, Taylor demanded that his indictment for war crimes by a
Special Court in Sierra Leone be rescinded as a condition for peace in
Liberia and the sub-region. "Peace in Liberia is dependent and hangs upon
that particular situation [the indictment]. It has to be removed," he told
reporters. "It sets an unhealthy precedent. Tomorrow it could be Museveni,
Kagame, Mugabe, Gbagbo," he added, referring to the presidents of Uganda,
Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Cote d'Ivoire.

Taylor was the tenth person to be publicly indicted by the UN-backed
Special Court. Seven are already in custody. One, Sam Bockarie, the former
rebel military commander in Sierra Leone is dead, killed by Taylor's
security forces. The other, Johnny Paul Koroma, who headed a short-lived
military government in 1997, remains at large.

Earlier in the week, Taylor had urged the UN to send a peace keeping force
to Liberia to enforce peace between his fighters and rebels of LURD and
the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). However, he failed to
address key demands by both rebel movements that he step down as president
to make way for an interim government of national reconciliation which
would organise fresh elections.

Relief organisations, the UN, the Us and Ghana governments all appealed
for a ceasefire in Liberia to allow talks to proceed.

For IRIN coverage of the Liberian crisis go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Liberia


CAMEROON: US $49.7 million to buy back debt

The World Bank approved a US $49.7 million soft loan to help Cameroon
reduce its commercial debt. The funds would be used by Cameroon to buy
back US $953.5 million of commercial debt and suppliers credit at 14.5
percent of its face value, the World Bank said in a statement on
Wednesday.

"Creditors from commercial banks and suppliers of vital imports will be
paid, allowing for the elimination of commercial debt arrears and the
liberation of domestic resources for critical development concerns," Noel
K. Tshiani, World Bank Team Leader for the operation said.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34710&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CAMEROON


COTE D'IVOIRE: More West African peacekeepers arrive

Some 60 paramilitary gendarmes arrived in Cote d'Ivoire on Thursday to
beef up the West African peacekeeping force in the country, where rebels
occupying parts of the north are shortly due to begin disarming.

Commander Nestor Djido, the head of the peacekeeping ground forces said
the gendarmes from Senegal, Ghana and Benin were the vanguard of a force
of 300. They would reinforce a force of 1,300 soldiers who are working
alongside 4,000 French troops to maintain a two-month-old ceasefire
between rebel and government forces following a peace accord in January.

Cote d'Ivoire, the most prosperous country in West Africa, erupted into
civil war last September following a failed coup. The UN said 750,000
people were displaced internally and about 500,000 fled to neighbouring
countries, particularly Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea.

For IRIN coverage of the Cote d'Ivoire crisis go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Cote_d_Ivoire


GHANA: Former President Jerry Rawlings questioned by police

Police have questioned former president Jerry Rawlings over his recent
allegations that some ministers in Ghana's current government were
involved in serial killings in the West African country in 1994-2001.

Speaking at a public forum on 4 June, Rawlings said he had information
that 15 Ministers in President John Kufuor's cabinet had a direct hand in
the murders of 34 women over a seven-year period when he was head of
state. But he refused to give any specific names.

"Rawlings said he will only reveal the names of those Ministers if the
government will invite an independent investigator to conduct a
lie-detector test on him and those implicated in order to minimize the
telling of lies in the case. If these conditions are accepted, he is ready
to reveal the names today," a spokesman for the former president said. But
Ghana's Inspector General of Police, Nana Owusu-Nsiah, said he was
"profoundly disappointed with the utterances and conduct of the former
president".

Rawlings ruled Ghana for several months after leading a coup in 1979. He
came to power again in a second coup in 1982 and was subsequently elected
president in 1992 and 1996.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34703&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GHANA


NIGERIA: 15 killed in northeast religious riots

Some 15 people died as sectarian violence which first flared in the
northeast Nigerian town of Numan at the weekend spread to nearby villages.
Hafiz Ringim, the police commissioner for Adamawa State, in which Numan is
located, said the violence also degenerated into widespread looting of
homes and shops.

Violence first broke out in the predominantly Christian town on Sunday
after an Hausa-speaking Muslim trader with origins in the northwest,
stabbed a Christian woman to death. Christian youths responded by burning
the main mosque, other smaller ones and the buildings of prominent Muslims
in the town. But as police, local ethnic Bachama youths spread to nearby
villages to hunt down Muslims and continued the reprisal attacks.

Relations between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria have grown
increasingly tense since twelve states in the country's predominantly
Islamic north adopted strict Shariah law which prescribes much harsher
punishments for various offences including public flogging for drinking
alcohol, the ampuation of limbs for stealing and stoning to death for
adultery.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34711&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGERIA


NIGERIA: Obasanjo names new military commanders

President Olusegun Obasanjo who has just been sworn in to start a new
four-year term as elected head of state named former Chief of Army Staff,
Lt. Gen Alexander Ogomudia as Chief of Defense Staff, in charge of all the
three arms of the armed forces and the police. He also named Maj-Gen
Martin Luther Agwai, a senior peacekeeping official with the UN to succeed
Ogomudia as head of the army.

Agwai was deputy commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone
(UNAMSIL) for two years until he became Deputy Military Adviser in the
Department of Peacekeeping Operations at UN headquarters in New York, in
November last year. The head of the navy, Vice-Admiral Samuel Afolayan,
and head of the air force, Air Marshal Jonah Wuyep, both retained their
positions in the military reshuffle.

Obasanjo's election in 1999 ended more than 15 years of military rule in
Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with more than 120 million people.
Obasanjo was a former military ruler in the 1970s and was reputed to have
the influence to bring Nigeria's 80,000-strong military establishment
under civilian control.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34624&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGERIA


CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Commission to discuss troops withdrawal from Bakassi

The withdrawal of troops and administrative personnel from the disputed
Bakassi Peninsula was discussed at the fourth session of the joint
Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission on the border wrangle in the Nigerian
capital Abuja this week. The commission was set up by the UN Secretary
General, Kofi Annan, after Nigeria rejected a ruling of the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) in October 2002 awarding the disputed oil-rich
territory to Cameroon.

The Bakassi dispute reached a high point with troops from the two
countries clashing occasionally in the peninsula during the early 1980s.
In late 1993, Nigerian troops occupied most of Bakassi, prompting Cameroon
to file a complaint at the ICJ in 1994. The ICJ said that the peninsula,
which extends into the Gulf of Guinea between both countries, belonged to
Cameroon.

In November 2002, Annan invited presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria
and Paul Biya of Cameroon to a meeting in Geneva, where they agreed to
seek a peaceful resolution of the dispute. Subsequently the Mixed
Commission was set up.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34684&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CAMEROON-NIGERIA


GUINEA: Government stops opposition conference

Guinea stopped five foreign politicians from entering its territory to
attend a conference on democracy organised by veteran opposition leader
Alpha Conde and prevented the conference itself from taking place.

Conde arrived at Conakry airport on Sunday on a flight from Senegal with
Mustapha Niasse, the former prime minister of Senegal; Mamadu Yusufu, the
former prime minister of Niger and Paulo Jorge, a former foreign minister
of Angola and a French Socialist Party representative. But immigration
officials refused to allow the foreign politicians entry to Guinea and
they were forced to leave on the same aircraft. Supporters of Conde's
Rally of the Guinean People party subsequently clashed with police who
fired tear gas cannisters into the crowd.

The fracas was the latest of several incidents to take place as Guinea
gears up for presidential elections in December, when President Lansana
Conte is expected to seek a fresh term. Conte, who has been ill for some
time with diabetes and heart trouble, is expected to face a challenge from
Conde and from Sidya Toure, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1998.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34629&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GUINEA


MAURITANIA: Life returns to normal after coup attempt

Life gradually returned to normal in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott on
Tuesday following an attempted coup against President Maaouiya Ould
Sid'Ahmed Taya which was put down after two days of heavy fighting. But
the identity of the coup plotters who shelled the presidential palace and
managed to put state radio and television off the air for 24 hours,
remained a mystery.

Ould Taya, who came to power through a military coup of his own making 19
years ago, confirmed that the uprising had been quashed in a radio
broadcast to the nation on Monday afternoon. On Tuesday shops and
businesses and some government offices reopened and most diplomatic
missions resumed work. Army patrols were much in evidence in the streets
as the government sought to arrest any mutineers still at large.

When Ould Taya first came to power, he developed close links with the
deposed Iraqi leader Sadaam Hussein. But he distanced himself from Baghdad
after Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait and developed close links with the US
and Israel instead. In 1999, Mauritania became only the third member of
the Arab League to establish full diplomatic relations with the Jewish
state, a move that proved widely unpopular at home.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34719&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=MAURITANIA


SIERRA LEONE: FAO reports rising food production

Food production in Sierra Leone recovered sharply last year as many people
displaced by 10 years of civil war returned to their villages and resumed
planting their fields, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
said. But many internally diplaced people and refugees who had fled abroad
only returned to their villages after the main planting season had got
under way and as a result more than 135,000 rural families would require
food aid in 2003.

"Emergency relief distribution for the main rice planting season are
required for a total of more than 135,000 farm families in 2003.
Targetting for agricultural relief interventions should prioritise the
resettled populations," FAO said.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=34682&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=SIERRA_LEONE


IRIN-WA
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Fax: +225 22-41-9339
Email: IRIN-WA@irin.ci

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