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 199
25 - 31 October 2003


CONTENTS:

LIBERIA: Rebels release 28 war detainees 
COTE D'IVOIRE: Obasanjo, Kufuor try to kick-start peace process
CAPE VERDE: WFP feeds school children
NIGERIA: Polio immunisation delayed
NIGERIA: Vigilantes curb piracy in Niger delta
CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Nigeria to hand over 33 villages to Cameroon
NIGERIA-SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: $500m for offshore exploration rights
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: UNICEF given money for vaccination campaign
GUINEA-BISSAU: Schools reopen, teachers promised pay
MALI: France demands crackdown on illegal immigration

LIBERIA: Rebels release 28 war detainees

The rebel group which controls southeastern Liberia, the Movement for
Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), released 28 war detainees to the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ICRC said the detainees
had been held in Zwedru, the headquarters of Grand Geddeh county, and were
released earlier this week.

An 18 August agreement, signed in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, between the
Liberian government and the two rebel groups - MODEL and the main rebel
group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and other
political interest groups, obliges the warring parties to release all
political prisoners and prisoners of war.

MODEL is the first of the three warring parties to formally release
detainees since the peace deal was signed.

Meanwhile LURD lifted a three-day ban on relief vehicles moving out of
Monrovia on the main road west to Tubmanburg and the Sierra Leone border.
It closed the road last Saturday in protest at the rejection of three LURD
nominees to senior government posts by Gyude Bryant, the chairman of
Liberia's transitional government.

The United Nations urged LURD to make sure that its fighters do not block
relief vehicles from entering areas under its control again.
 
"Political developments should not be linked to humanitarian activities.
We have to move in anytime to do our job," the acting UN Humanitarian
Coordinator in Liberia, Cyrille Niameogo, told a news conference.

Before closing the Po River bridge, LURD called for Bryant's resignation
and threatened to pull out of his broad-based government. However, Bryant
softened his position on senior government appointments after a
closed-door meeting with the Liberian parliament on Monday.

In a related development, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) on Tuesday sent an
assessment mission by helicopter to Sanniquiellie, the rebel-held
headquarters of Nimba County in north central Liberia, close to the
Ivorian border town of Danane.

UNHCR said the mission reported that "a large portion of the population
still prefer to remain in the bushes until security can be guaranteed."

Last week, the UN flew an assessment mission to Voinjama in Lofa County in
northwestern Liberia for the first time since LURD took control of the
area in April 1999. The UN said it plans to send a convoy of relief
supplies to Voinjama by road.
 
Relief workers reckon that two months after the signing of peace agreement
to end 14 years of civil war, tens of thousands of desperate civilians are
still caught up behind rebel lines deep in the interior without adequate
food, medicine and safe water. Many of them have lived rough for several
years and urgently need relief aid.

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

COTE D'IVOIRE: Obasanjo, Kufuor try to kick-start peace process

The presidents of Nigeria and Ghana jetted into Abidjan on Thursday for
talks with President Laurent Gbagbo to kick-start the country's stalled
peace process. President Olusegun Obasanjo and John Kufuor left for home
after urging Ivorian rebels to return to the national unity government led
by Gbagbo.

The rebels, who attempted to topple Gbagbo in September 2002, have
occupied the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire for the past 13 months. They
signed a peace agreement with Gbagbo in January and joined a broad-based
government of national reconciliation in April. However they pulled out on
23 September, suspending plans to disarm and demobilise in protest at what
they said was Gbagbo's refusal to delegate effective power to cabinet
ministers.

Gbagbo has recently visited Ghana and Nigeria for talks on the impasse,
while rebel leader Guillaume Soro visited Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria and
Senegal. Ivorian opposition leader Alassane Ouattara and former president
Henri Konan Bedie are involved in the diplomatic merry-go-round.

Meanwhile in the rebel stronghold of Korhogo, armed men attempted to break
into a branch of the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO), but they
were beaten off by local rebel commanders after a heavy gunfight. The
attempted break-in on Sunday night followed another on the branch of the
BCEAO in the western rebel-held town of Man 24 hours earlier and an
assault on the BCEAO branch in the rebel capital Bouake on 25 September in
which 50 billion CFA (US $83 million) in banknotes was stolen. More than
100 French peacekeeping troops were sent to restore order in Man.

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

CAPE VERDE: WFP feeds school children

The World Food Programme (WFP) said its meals-for-school programme had
provided food to children aged six to 14 years in over 450 primary and
pre-primary schools in the Cape Verde Islands, an arid archipelago of
volcanic islands on the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of West Africa.

The programme has boosted school enrolment to almost 100 percent, in a
country with a very modest agricultural base, heavily dependent on
expensive food imports. It has fulfilled a 1990's target set by the
government, of six years mandatory school attendance for every child on
the nine inhabited islands in the archipelago.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37546&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CAPE_VERDE

NIGERIA: Polio immunisation delayed

Muslim leaders in Nigeria led a campaign against polio immunisation saying
that the polio vaccine contained agents that could cause infertility and
spread the human immunodeficiency virus which causes AIDS.

After three northern states halted the immunisation programme, the
government decided on Wednesday to conduct fresh laboratory investigation
of the vaccines. Datti Ahmed, head of the Supreme Council for Shari'ah in
Nigeria (SCSN), and a medical doctor by profession, welcomed the decision.

"We are happy the government has seen the need to have the vaccines
investigated," Ahmed told IRIN. "But it shouldn't be the people who are
importing the vaccines into Nigeria, like UNICEF (United Nations Children's
Fund), who should do the testing," he added.

According to the Muslim cleric, a team of "competent, scientifically
educated Nigerians and foreigners", working with representatives of
agencies involved in polio immunisation, should undertake the laboratory
review of the polio vaccines.

UNICEF said the campaign against the oral polio vaccine in northern
Nigeria had resulted in many children missing immunisation, leading to a
resurgence of the virus spreading to other parts of the country and West
Africa, and paralysing more children.

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

CAMEROON-NIGERIA: Nigeria to hand over 33 villages to Cameroon

Nigeria has agreed to hand over 33 villages to Cameroon in accordance with
an October 2002 judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over
a dispute between the two countries along their 1,500 km common border.

Nigeria had refused to accept the ruling of the ICJ awarding ownership of
the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula in the Gulf of Guinea to Cameroon until the
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan arranged a meeting between Presidents
Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and Paul Biya of Cameroon, where they
resolved to sort out their disputes peacefully.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37536&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=CAMEROON-NIGERIA

NIGERIA-SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: $500m for offshore exploration rights

US and Nigerian oil companies bid over US $500 million this week, for the
right to explore deep waters in the Gulf of Guinea which is shared by
Nigeria and the small island state of Sao Tome and Principe. The bids were
worth more than the two states expected and should mean a windfall payment
of around $200 million for Sao Tome in the first half of 2004, analysts
told IRIN by telephone.

Sao Tome and Principe, a former Portuguese colony of 170,000 people has
until now survived on growing cocoa and selling deep-sea fishing rights
off its offshore waters. Its per capita income of $280 per year makes it
one of the poorest countries in Africa. But an oil bonanza could transform
Sao Tome rapidly over the next decade.

Sam Dimka, spokesman of the Joint Development Authority set up by Nigeria
and Sao Tome to administer their shared offshore waters, said 33 bids were
received from 20 companies for eight of the nine blocks on offer. Nigeria,
already Africa's largest oil producer with output of two million barrels
per day, will take 60 percent of all oil and gas revenues accruing from
these waters, while Sao Tome will take 40 percent.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37513&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=NIGERIA-SAO_TOME_AND_PRINCIPE

EQUATORIAL GUINEA: UNICEF given money for vaccination campaign

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said on Monday it received US $432,000
from the government of Equatorial Guinea to conduct a vaccination
campaign. The money would support the campaign to vaccinate all pregnant
women and all children under five against polio, measles, tuberculosis,
diptheria, tetanus and whooping cough, UNICEF said.

Only 20 percent of children in Equatorial Guinea are vaccinated. The
upcoming campaign targets 105,000 children below the age of five and
25,000 pregnant women.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37483&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=EQUATORIAL_GUINEA

GUINEA-BISSAU: Schools reopen, teachers promised pay

Government schools in Guinea-Bissau reopened on Wednesday after the World
Bank promised some US $2.5 million in loans to pay teachers 10 months of
salary arrears. Schools in this former Portuguese colony had been
paralysed for most of the past two years by a series of teachers' strikes.

Meanwhile floods destroyed vast areas of cropland in the east of
Guinea-Bissau, threatening thousands of families with famine, Agriculture
Minister Mamadu Badji said on Monday.

He said 80 percent of Guinea-Bissau's peasant farmers had been adversely
affected by flooding and forecast that Guinea-Bissau would have to import
about 120,000 MT of rice this year to make good the expected shortfall in
local food production. Meteorologists said the floods were caused by the
heaviest rainfall in the Sahel in more than 30 years.

For IRIN coverage of Guinea-Bissau go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37542&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=GUINEA-BISSAU

MALI: France demands crackdown on illegal immigration

French President Jacques Chirac, visiting West African, urged his Malian
counterpart, Amadou Toumani Toure, to "put an end to the activities of
mafia-style intermediaries who have no scruples" during a two-day visit to
Mali which ended on Saturday.

But Toure, replied that Mali, which is one of the poorest countries in the
world, could not afford to prevent its citizens from seeking a better life
overseas because of its economic dependence on the remittances they send
home.

According to the French Ministry of the Interior, there are about 120,000
Malian immigrants in France, 60 percent of whom are there illegally. Most
come from the very poor Kayes region near Mali's western border with
Senegal. There is also a large Malian immigrant community in the United
States, Spain and Italy, and Malian traders are found throughout
Sub-Saharan Africa.

For the full story go to:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=37469&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=MALI


IRIN-WA
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