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 197
11 - 17 October 2003


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Bryant takes helm for two years
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: US reopens embassy
NIGER: University to stay close until further notice
MAURITANIA: Court clears six to run for presidency


LIBEIRA: Bryant takes helm for two years

Liberian businessman Guyde Bryant, who was elected in August to lead
Liberia for the next two years, officially took office on Tuesday.

Bryant started work by abolished monopolies on imports of rice and
petroleum products imposed by former president Charles Taylor. He also
scrapped a exit visa requirement for Liberians wishing to leave the
country.

On Wednesdday, stakeholders of the Liberian conflict- armed rebel
movements and political parties- began submitting the names of their
nominees to fill the cabinet. The nominees included Daniel Chea as defense
minister and Peter Coleman to run the health department.

Chea and Coleman were nominated under the banner of the National Patriotic
Party of exiled president Charles Taylor.

The rebel Liberians United For Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)
nominated four ministers, but has not been confirmed yet by Bryant.

While the government was surely taking shape, the 76-member national
parliament hit a snag on Tuesday when peace mediator, General Abdusalami
Abubakar, rejected 15 representatives nominated to represent each of
Liberia's 15 counties, saying they had been selected in the capital
Monrovia. Subsequently the election of a new speaker and deputy speaker
never took place.

Meanwhile citing insecurity, the World Food Programme temporarily stopped
distributing food to internally displaced people in rural Liberia.  While
the agency continued its work in the capital Monrovia, over 100,000 people
living in the hinterland were left without food. The agency said it would
return to the rural areas once security conditions were adequate.

Skirmishes have mainly occurred between government forces and LURD
fighters, but fighting has also taken place between the government and a
second rebel group, MODEL.

The relative calm has allowed UN organsiations and other humanitarian
agencies to return and provide assitance to thousands of civilian victims
of the conflict. Among others, UNICEF on Sunday shipped into Liberia 3,200
school-iin-box educational kits ahead of its Back-to-School program on 3
November. UK-based relief agency, Merlin, also announced on Thursday it
had started providing medical services to at least 125,000 people in the
rebel-held towns of Zwedru and Greenville where, according to the agency,
no single doctor has operated in months.

For coverage on Liberia go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Liberia


EQUATORIAL GUINEA: US reopens embassy

The United States re-opened on Thursday its embassy in Equatorial Guinea,
saying that the move was necessary to provide services to the
3,0000-strong US community working in the country.

The US had closed the embassy in 1995, citing budgetary constraints.

The re-opening comes at a time when the country of less than one million
inhabitants has become sub-Sahara's Africa third largest oil producer with
a daily production of about 350,000 barrels per day, after Angola and
Nigeria. The growing market is largely dominated by US oil multinationals.

The London-based international environmental watchdog, Global Witness,
told IRIN on Thrsday that the re-opening sent a "wrong signal" as the US,
for all its rhetoric about human rights and democracy, was knotting strong
ties with one of Africa's worst offender in terms of human and democracy.

Opposition leaders, international human rights groups as well as the US
Department of State have indexed the country as one rife with violations
of human rights.

An exiled opposition leader, Aquilino Nguema Ona Nchama, looked past the
embassy's opening and stressed the need for a better redistribution of the
oil money. He also criticised the climate of fear and repression that has
plagued the 24-year old regime of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

In a recent report, the US Department of State said that "there is strong
evidence of government misappropriation of oil revenues", and that
government's failure to invest the revenues in the country "has meant
little improvement in the economic and social welfare of most
EcuatoGuineans."

For IRIN coverage of Equatorial Guinea please go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Equatorial_Guinea

NIGER: University to stay closed until further notice

The Niger government, who last week broke out a student demonstration and
then promised to settle their grievances, has shut the country's only
public university in a bid to restructure housing facilities.

The Abdou Moumouni University, which has 12,000 students and receives US
$3.5 million annually from the government, has been closed since Monday,
and will remain so until further notice.

The Ministry of Secondary and Higher Education justified this measure by
the need to do away with the anarchy that has plagued campus housing. The
closure came a few days after hundreds of university students launched a
strike to demand better housing, transportation and dining services. The
students were also pressing for payment of arrears in government subsidy.

"The campus's closure is concrete proof that the authorities can't solve
students' demands and don't have the will to do so", a university student
told IRIN. Another suggested that closing the university was simply a way
of preventing student protests when President Jacques Chirac of France
visits Niger next week.

In the last decade, Niger's education system has been rocked students' and
teachers' strikes as both repeatedly demand an improvement in the working
conditions.

For IRIN coverage of Niger please go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Niger


MAURITANIA: Court clears six to run for presidency

Mauritania's Constitutional Court on Saturday the green light to five
presidential aspirants to challenge the 19-year old regime of incumbent
President Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya in next month's presidential
election.

In addition to Taya, other candidates include Ahmed Ould Daddah, the
younger of Mauritania's first president who passed away this week; Mohamed
Khouna Ould Haidalla, Taya's immediate predecessor, and the first-ever
woman candidate, Aicha Mint Jiddana.

The two-week campaign will begin on Wednesday and end on the eve of the 7
November polls, the third multiparty polls in Mauritania's history.

For IRIN coverage please go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Mauritania


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