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

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


WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 226
14 - 21 May 2004


CONTENTS:

COTE D'IVOIRE : Crisis deepens
CHAD: Army mutineers surrender
LIBERIA: One person killed in riot by former combatants
NIGERIA: 20 fresh in Plateau violence despite state of emergency
WEST AFRICA: Cloud seeding could be expected across the Sahel


COTE D'IVOIRE: Crisis deepens

President Laurent Gbagbo on Wednesday sacked three ministers from
government, including rebel leader Guillaume Soro, one day after
announcing that he wanted Prime Minister Seydou Diarra to form a new
government and imposing other sanctions on opposition ministers who have
withdrew from government since March.

An alliance of opposition ministers and rebels have rejected the
ministers' sacking and all the other decisions, while Premier Diarra on
Saturday announced that he was suspending his participation in government
and denied that Gbagbo's cabinet changes were "on his recommendation."

According to the Ivorian media, Diarra wrote a letter to Gbagbo also
saying that he was unable to convene a cabinet meeting as the president
had ordered him to do.

While the international community has reminded all the actors that the
Linas-Marcoussis agreement remains the best framework for peace, France
came out the strongly on Thursday demanding that the government reconvenes
as soon as possible with all 41 ministers, including the three who were
sacked.

Political sources told IRIN that Diarra was on the verge of resigning as
he had written a resignation letter. But they also told IRIN that pressure
from both inside Cote d’Ivoire and abroad have seemed so far to dissuade
him. As the week ended, a Diarra press aide told IRIN that it was unlike
that he resigns.

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


CHAD: Army mutineers surrender

A group of rebel soldiers who staged an abortive mutiny at the weekend
surrendered Tuesday night following two days of negotiations, the
government said on Wednesday. Acting defense minister Emmanuel Nadingar
told reporters that a group of about 80 mutineers had surrendered their
weapons on Tuesday night.

The identity of the mutineers and their motives remained unclear, although
government officials have said their uprising was in protest at unpaid
salaries.

However, many diplomats and local political analysts said they suspected
the mutineers had a deeper political motive. They said they believed that
those leading the rebellion belonged to the same powerful Zagawa ethnic
group as Deby and were unhappy with the president's performance in
government.

In particular they highlighted Deby's failure to back wholeheartedly the
rebellion in Sudan's western Darfur region, in which the section of the
Zagawa tribe living in Sudan is heavily involved, and Deby's plans to
change the constitution to allow him to serve a third five-year term as
head of state.

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


LIBERIA: One person killed in riot by former combatants

One person was killed during a riot by 500 former combatants in the
Liberian capital Monrovia on Monday, the UN mission in Liberia said.

The rioters were former government soldiers who were paid US$75 of their
$300 resettlement grant when they were disarmed last December. They staged
a violent protest demonstration in the eastern suburb of Paynesville to
demand the immediate payment of the remaining money. They set-up
roadblocks, attacked vehicles and attempted to loot shops. A Jordanian
unit from the UN police force tried to disperse them with tear gas, but
eyewitnesses said the rioters were only brought under control after five
hours when reinforcements of UN peacekeeping troops arrived on the scene.

General Joseph Owonibi, the acting commander of UN peacekeeping troops in
Liberia, said moves were under way to address the grievances of the
protesting former combatants, who felt they had been sidelined following
the resumption of the UN disarmament programme in April after a four-month
gap.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday that it was running
out of cash to feed hundreds of thousands of displaced and vulnerable
people within Liberia and Liberian refugees in neighbouring Sierra Leone
and Guinea. The agency warned that it might have to cut their rations from
July.

WFP said in a statement that it had appealed for US $77.7 million to fund
its food distribution programme in the three countries, but had received
only $32.4 million so far.

"Unless further donations are made immediately, WFP will be compelled to
start cutting food rations to beneficiaries in Liberia as early as July,".

WFP said it was currently providing emergency food rations to 490,000
people in Liberia, half of whom are children benefiting from school
feeding programmes. The agency said it wanted to raise the number of
children receiving free meals at primary schools from 258,000 at present
to 350,000, but it would only be able to do this if adequate funding was
provided. Another key group of beneficiaries of WFP food handouts are the
estimated 40,000 to 60,000 former combatants in Liberia's 14-year civil
war who are currently being disarmed by UN peacekeepers.

WFP said the United States had so far been the main contributor to its
Liberian food aid programme, with a grant of $25.2 million. Japan,
Switzerland, France and the Netherlands had also made major contributions,
it added.

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


NIGERIA: 20 fresh in Plateau violence despite state of emergency

More than 20 Christian villagers were killed on Tuesday in a fresh
outbreak of religious violence in Plateau State in central Nigeria, where
President Olusegun Obasanjo imposed a state of emergency earlier this
week, residents in the area told IRIN.

Armed Muslims attacked five Christian villages on Tuesday near the town of
Yelwa on Tuesday morning, they said. The raids appeared to be a reprisal
for a Christian massacre of Muslims in Yelwa on 2 May.

The latest killings took place just a few hours before Obasanjo declared a
state of emergency in the state, sacking its elected governor, dismissing
the state legislature and appointing a former army general to run the
territory for the next six months.

The massacre of an estimated 600 Muslims in Yelwa sparked reprisal attacks
on Christians in the Muslim-dominated city of Kano in northern Nigeria.
Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in southeastern Plateau
State following the Yelwa massacre, fearing violence.

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


WEST AFRICA: Cloud seeding could be expected across the Sahel

Cloud seeding, the practice of firing salt-based chemicals into pregnant
clouds to force them to shed rain, has proved so successful in Burkina
Faso that the programme could soon be extended to other semi-arid
countries in West Africa, according to the Inter State Committee Against
Drought in the Sahel (CILSS).

Burkina Faso began using light aircraft to seed clouds in 1998, and its
positive experience persuaded the CILSS heads of state to look at ways of
using this technology to enhance rainfall across the region when they met
in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott in January.

The first two countries expected to follow Burkina Faso’s lead are Mali
and Niger, where cloud seeding is expected to begin in 2005 at the latest.
However funding has yet to be secured. CILSS is organizing a meeting in
Ouagadougou next week with potential donors to seek the US$ 60 million
needed to extend the programme across all nine countries for five years.

The practice involves releasing silver iodide, usually from a plane, into
an existing cloud formation to encourage the enlargement of water droplets
and ultimately rain. However, it is an expensive process and does not
always yield results. The CILSS project therefore includes the
establishment of more meteorological stations and sophisticated radars to
monitor cloud formations so that the rain-bearing potential of each cloud
mass can be more accurately evaluated.
 
For West Africa coverage please go to
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=West_Africa


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