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 198
18 - 24 October 2003


CONTENTS:

COTE D'IVOIRE: French journalist shot dead by policeman
LIBERIA: Bryant rejects three LURD nominees to government posts
BURKINA FASO: Opposition leader arrested over alleged coup plot
WEST AFRICA: Massive campaign to protect 15 million children from polio
NIGERIA: Fresh violence threatens fragile truce in Niger delta
GHANA-NIGERIA: Security officials discuss child trafficking
MAURITANIA: Old men vie for power in poor desert state
NIGER: France promises $11 m for regulating Niger river flow
MALI: Tuberculosis makes a comeback as patients fail to seek treatment
GUINEA: Presidential elections set for 21 December


COTE D'IVOIRE: French journalist shot dead by policeman

The otherwise "calm but tense" atmosphere in Cote d'Ivoire was heightened
by the murder of Jean Helene, the correspondent for Radio France
Internationale (RFI) on Tuesday night by a policeman as he waited outside
police headquarters in Abidjan to interview 11 political detainees who
were about to be released.

A French embassy spokesman quoted eyewitnesses as saying that Helene, 48,
was sitting in his car and talking on his mobile phone when the policeman
approached him. The French journalist got out of the car but the policeman
rammed the butt of an automatic rifle into his stomach before shooting him
in the back of the head, he added.

Internal Security Minister Martin Bleou said later that a police sergeant
had been arrested in connection with the killing and a full investigation
was under way. The sergent appeared before a military tribunal on Friday.

The cold-blood murder drew condemnation from the international comunity
with the French President Jacques Chirac, who began a four-day visit to
Niger and Mali on Wednesday, deploring the killing and demanding that the
Ivorian authorities "shed all possible light on this murder".

The press freedom watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), which
criticised the recent erosion of press freedom in Cote d'Ivoire earlier
this week, condemned the killing and demanded a full inquiry.

The eleven detainees who Helene was waiting to interview were all
activists of the Rally of Republicans (RDR) party of exiled former prime
minister Alasanne Ouattara, who was banned from standing against Gbagbo in
the 2000 presidential election.

In another development, diplomats said Ghanaian President John Kufuor, the
current chairman of the Economic Community of West African States
(ECOWAS), was leading efforts to bring Gbagbo and the rebels together for
a reconciliation summit in Accra. Gbagbo flew to Ghana for talks with
Kufuor on Sunday and went on to Abuja for a meeting with Nigerian
president Olusegun Obasanjo.

On 23 September, the rebels suspended their participation in the peace
process and ordered their nine ministers to withdraw from a broad-based
government of national reconciliation. They also put on ice plans to
disarm and allow government administrators to return to the north of the
country, which has been in rebel hands since civil war broke out on 19
September last year.


LIBERIA: Bryant rejects three LURD nominees to government posts

Gyude Bryant, the head of Liberia's power-sharing transitional government,
rejected three nominees for top posts in his administration who were put
forward by the LURD rebel movement.

In a strongly-worded statement on Thursday, Bryant rejected the proposed
appointment of LURD's top military commander, General Aliyu Sheriff as
Chief of Staff of the new national army, the Armed Forces of Liberia.

He also vetoed the proposed appointment of a former bank teller Isaac
Nyanebo, as deputy head of the central bank and Charles Bennie, the LURD
spokesman in the Netherlands, as head of the government's customs and
excise department.

Bryant called "on all concerned to take due note that the Armed Forces of
Liberia, the Central Bank of Liberia, and positions within the civil
service system are not included in all the allocations of positions to
parties to the Agreement".

Last Sunday, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) expressed concern about the
naming of discredited cronies of past leaders to posts in the new
government. It warned that such practices would dissuade the international
community from giving aid to help rebuild the country's shattered
infrastructure.

In another development, relief workers in Buchanan, Liberia's second
largest city, reported that more than 100 civilians had recently fled to
the city from Rivercess county, further to the east, after being harassed
by MODEL (the Movement for Democracy in Liberia) fighters who have
controlled that city since late July. A UN mission visited the city on
Wednesday led by Abou Moussa, the UN humanitarian coordinator in Liberia.

Meanwhile, another UN mission to assess the situation in Voinjama, the
headquarters town of Lofa County in northwestern Liberia, said there was
an urgent need for humanitarian agencies to quickly move into this and
other rebel-held areas of the interior.


BURKINA FASO: Opposition leader arrested over alleged coup plot

The government of Burkina Faso early this week arrested Norbert
Tiendrebeogo, leader of the opposition Social Forces Front (FFS) party, in
connection with an alleged coup plot.

Tiendrebeogo was summoned to the police headquarters for questioning on
Monday and was subsequently detained, making him the 16th person to be
arrested in connection with the alleged plot to overthrow President Blaise
Campaore.

On the health front, the Burkina government said it hoped to eradicate
guinea worm in the next five years, having reduced the number of new cases
reported each year to less than 200.

The country's Health Minister Alain Yoda told a guinea worm program review
meeting in the capital, Ouagadougou, on Monday that the number of new
cases of the debilitating infection caused by a water-borne parasite, had
fallen from 11,784 in 1992, when Burkina Faso launched a campaign to
control guinea worm, to 174 last year.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), guinea-worm infections
in Africa as a whole had fallen by 98.5 percent since it launched a drive
to eradicate the problem in 1989.

It said that Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal and Chad had all managed to
eradicate guinea worm, but the disease remained endemic in 12 countries,
most of which are in West Africa.


WEST AFRICA: Massive campaign to protect 15 million children from polio

A three-day vaccination campaign was launched in five West African
countries on Wednesday to protect 15 million children from a new polio
outbreak spreading from Nigeria, the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

The US $10 million campaign aimed to vaccinate every child in Benin,
Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Togo, against the virus, which has been
genetically traced to Kano state in northern Nigeria.

Epidemiologists blamed the resurgence of polio in Nigeria on insufficient
immunization coverage in the north, where some Muslim organisations have
opposed vaccination campaigns.

The latest such set back was on Friday when Zamfara State in northern
Nigeria suspended the polio immunisation exercise which began nationwide
on Friday, citing widespread fears in the predominantly Muslim region the
vaccines might be risky.

The Global Polio Eradication Initiative is spearheaded by WHO, Rotary
International, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and
UNICEF. Polio is now present in only seven countries down from over 125
when the initiative was launched in 1988.


NIGERIA: Fresh violence threatens fragile truce in Niger delta

Fresh ethnic clashes around the Nigerian oil town of Warri  claimed lives
of more than a dozen people, threatening a fragile ceasefire secured
between rival tribal militias in the troubled Niger Delta, residents said
on Thursday.

Violent clashes erupted between armed groups from the Ijaw, Itsekiri and
Urhobo tribes, the main ethnic groups inhabiting the Warri area, they
said.

Ijaws and Urhobos have in the past been allies against the Itsekiri, who
are perceived by both groups to be getting more than their fair share of
benefits accruing from oil operations in the western Niger Delta.


GHANA-NIGERIA: Security officials discuss child trafficking

Meanwhile, security officials from Ghana and Nigeria met in the Ghanaian
capital, Accra, to discuss greater collaboration to curb increasing child
trafficking in and out of West African countries.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), which coordinated the
meeting, said it had become necessary to work with security agencies from
both countries to burst child trafficking syndicates.

Officials said the problem had increased within the subregion with many of
the trafficked children being employed in Ghana's fishing industry, the
cocoa plantations in Cote d'Ivoire and stone quarries in Nigeria.


MAURITANIA: Old men vie for power in poor desert state

Diplomats and local politicians said that the 70-year-old army colonel,
President Maaouiya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya of Mauritania who came to power in
a 1984 coup, may find it more difficult to retain his iron grip on power
in this vast desert state of only 2.5 million people in the poll set for 7
November.

Firstly, they said, new more rigorous voting procedures would make it more
difficult to rig the poll in Ould Taya's favour than in the presidential
elections of 1992 and 1997.
Secondly, the president's control of the army, a key force in Mauritanian
politics, had become more tenuous since a bloody uprising in June.

The constitutional court has cleared five candidates to challenge him for
a new six-year term. They range from Mauritania's first ever woman
presidential candidate to the man Ould Taya overthrew to seize power
nearly two decades ago.

The two-week election campaign, which began on 22 October, is being run in
an atmosphere of strictly limited political freedom.

The government, which has always been sensitive to media criticism, seized
the entire print run of four different weekly newspapers earlier this
month, because it objected to their content. It has also banned civil
society organisations from forming an independent body to monitor the
poll. And it has quietly closed the door to foreign observers.

Meanwhile, Mauritania and Niger could suffer extensive crop destruction
from an increasing number of locusts that has grouped in parts of the two
Sahelian nations unless the threat is mitigated, the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned on Monday.

Over the last two weeks, FAO said, large numbers of locusts were seen in
the northwestern Mauritanian areas of Akjoujt, Moudjeria, Aioun El Atrous
and in areas east of the capital, Nouakchott. The pests were also seen in
northern Niger around Tamesna and Air. The pests, the agency said, could
also threaten southern Algeria because large numbers had been seen in
northern Mali in early October.


NIGER: France promises $11 m for regulating Niger river flow

President Jacques Chirac of France on Wednesday announced 10 million euros
(about US $11 million) of French aid for a project to improve the
management of water resources in the Niger river basin at the start of a
four-day visit to West Africa.

Chirac said in a speech, shortly after his arrival in Niamey, the capital
of Niger, that France was also willing to host a donors meeting to raise
more money for managing water resources in the Niger basin.

The countries through which the river passes have formed the Niger Basin
Authority to improve their management of the water resources which it
provides. Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad and Cameroon are also
members of the organisation, which is based in Niamey.

On Thursday, Chirac was due to visit rural development projects at Tahoua,
a town 350 km of Niamey, before flying on to Mali on Friday.


MALI: Tuberculosis makes a comeback as patients fail to seek treatment

Tuberculosis is making a comeback in Mali, partly as a result of HIV/AIDS
patients falling prey to the disease, but also because the respiratory
disease is considered shameful and patients are reluctant to seek
treatment, government officials said.

Diallo Alima Nacko, coordinator of the National Campaign Against
Tuberculosis, told IRIN that the number of reported cases had increased 46
percent over the past seven years from 1,886 in 1995 to 2,757 in 2002.

Mali has been fighting the disease with the help of the World Health
Organisation (WHO) since 1963. Last weekend, the government launched a
fresh drive to persuade tuberculosis patients to come forward for
treatment.


GUINEA: Presidential elections set for 21 December

Presidential elections in Guinea, in which the head of state, Lansana
Conte will seek another seven-year term despite failing health, will take
place on 21 December, the government announced.

State radio and television said on Tuesday that Conte had signed a decree
setting the date for the poll.

Opposition parties have not yet decided whether to contest the election in
the light of the government's refusal to set up an independent electoral
commission and allow them free access to the state media.

Last Saturday, former prime minister Sidya Toure, was nominated as the
presidential candidate of his Union of Republican Forces (UFR) party.
However, in his acceptance speech, the former economist hinted that the
opposition would only contest the election if it was given firm guarantees
that it would be free and fair.


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