U N I T E D   N A T I O N S
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Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

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WEST AFRICA
IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 215
14 - 20 February 2004


CONTENTS:

COTE D'IVOIRE: Deployment of peacekeepers not yet approved
LIBERIA: UN helicopters patrol borders
GUINEA-BISSAU: Army admits soldiers' death
BURKINA FASO: Government announces new census in April
GUINEA: Government sells cheap rice to bring down soaring food prices
AFRICA: Water suppliers discuss how to bring in the private sector
NIGER: Former Tuareg minister arrested in connection with murder
SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: Study for airport expansion and deep-water port


COTE D'IVOIRE: Deployment of peacekeepers not yet approved

The US government dropped its opposition to the deployment of some 6,240
United Nations peacekeeping troops to Cote d'Ivoire and hopes that
Congress will now vote in favour of the move, John Negroponte, the US
Ambassador to the United Nations said this week.

Negroponte said in New York on Wednesday that the US government notified
Congress last week that it now favoured a UN plan to send more than 6,000
peacekeeping troops to Cote d'Ivoire.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had requested in his report to the UN
Security Council in January the deployment of blue helmets in Cote
d'Ivoire.

Negroponte said he was hopeful that Congress would vote on the issue by
the end of February.

The UN Security Council is expected to vote on the dispatch of a
peacekeeping force to Cote d'Ivoire on 27 February when the present
mandate of the small UN military observer mission in the country expires.

Negroponte stressed that US legislators still had to signal their approval
of the peacekeeping force before the Bush administration could vote for it
in the UN Security Council.

If approved, the UN force will absorb some 1,400 West African peacekeepers
already deployed in the country which plunged into war in 2002. Some 4,000
French troops have been manning the frontline between the rebel-held north
and the south which is in the government's hand.

Congressional approval is important because Washington foots 27 percent of
the bill for all UN peacekeeping operation and the president relies on
congressional approval for expenditure.

In another development, two Burkinabe immigrants were killed and at least
seven others were seriously wounded in machete attacks by youths of the
local Guere tribe in the government-controlled town of Duekoue in western
Cote d'Ivoire, hospital and police officials said on Wednesday.

The attacks occurred on Tuesday and early on Wednesday morning despite the
presence of French peacekeeping troops in the small town 500 km northwest
of the commercial capital Abidjan.

These assaults represent the latest in a series of bloody clashes between
Guere tribesmen and settlers from Burkina Faso, Mali and other parts of
Cote d'Ivoire. They were triggered by the outbreak of civil war in
September 2003.

At least 35 people, mainly Burkinabes, were killed in a series of ethnic
clashes in villages near Bangolo, just to the north of Duekoue, in late
December and early January.

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


LIBERIA: UN helicopters patrol borders
 
Helicopter gunships attached to the UN peacekeeping force in Liberia begun
regular patrols of the country's borders to control illegal logging and
other unauthorised cross-border movements, Souren Seradayrian, the deputy
head of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) announced.

An UNMIL spokesman said Russian-built helicopter gunships were being used
to conduct daily patrols along the land border with Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea
and Sierra Leone.

The United Nations slapped a ban on Liberian timber exports last year to
prevent former president Charles Taylor from using the foreign exchange
derived from logging activities to buy arms in contravention of a UN
embargo.

However, a Liberian environmental group, the Save My Future Foundation
(SAMFU), reported recently that the Togba Timber Company was still
illegally exporting timber from Maryland County near the border with Cote
d'Ivoire with the complicity of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia
(MODEL) rebel movement.

However, MODEL fighters were on Tuesday accused of seizing and looting
Liberia's fourth largest rubber plantation in the Sinoe County in the
southeast of the country, plantation officials said.

Daniel Saydee, the administrative manager of the Sinoe Rubber Plantation,
told reporters that MODEL fighters, claiming to have been instructed by
their commanders, looted and seized the plantation.

Kai Farley, a senior MODEL commander, denied the accusation terming the
information as misleading.

But Saydee insisted: "At present, the fighters are still occupying the
plantation, while some of our workers who were on the plantation had to
flee the area into nearby bushes for safety because of the harassments by
MODEL men."

Early this week, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published
in a post conflict environmental assessment of Liberia that the country's
forest cover had been reduced from 38 percent to 31 percent as a result of
uncontrolled logging during the past 14 years of civil war.

UNEP called for tight controls on logging, which has removed vast swathes
of forest cover, and poaching, which has seriously endangered the
country's rich wildlife. It also called for the urgent restoration of
public services in Liberia's shattered towns and cities to reduce
pollution and improve public health.

In another development, Seradayrian said categorically that UNMIL would
not resume its suspended disarmament programme in Liberia until UN
peacekeeping troops were fully deployed right across the West African
country.

He stated that this was one of three pre-conditions for disarmament to
resume which had been firmly agreed with the country's three warring
factions.

Other conditions include the completion of information campaign among
former combatants and the construction of four cantonment sites where
fighter would hand in their weapons and undergo a registration and
screening process.

Seradayrian, however, declined to give a firm date for the resumption of
disarmament, following a false start in early December, but he said the
full deployment of UNMIL troops throughout Liberia would be completed
"sometime in March."

UNMIL estimated the disarmament of some 38,000 ex-combatants before it
made an abortive attempt to start the disarmament process in December
without sufficient preparation.

More recently, the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based
think-tank, produced an estimate of 48,000 to 58,000.

UN Secretary General Annan referred in his speech to a donors'conference
on Liberia earlier this month, to the existence of 53,000 former
combatants.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on
Wednesday it had reunited 146 Liberian children with their families since
its tracing programme resumed in November.

They had become separated during the country's civil war and accounted for
a fraction of the 2,000 Liberian children scattered in various West
African countries whom the ICRC was trying to help.

ICRC tracing delegate, Yayoi Hayashi, said all the children returned so
far lived in and around the capital Monrovia, where security has been
guaranteed for several months by UN peacekeeping troops.

However, she said the ICRC was unable to reunite many other children with
families who had been traced to parts of the interior which were still
outside UN control and security was still poor.

For IRIN coverage of Liberia see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Liberia


GUINEA-BISSAU: Army admits soldiers' death

The head of the army in Guinea-Bissau admitted on Thursday that four
soldiers were killed and 14 wounded in recent clashes on the Senegalese
border with separatist rebels fighting for the independence of Senegal's
Casamance province.

General Verissimo Correia Seabra, the military chief of staff, told
reporters that a patrol of Guinea-Bissau soldiers fell into an ambush set
by the separatists.

His admission of army casualties followed a meeting on Wednesday with
president Henrique Rosa.

Last week, an army spokesman said there had been clashes near the border
village of Jumbembe in Oio Province on February 9, but despite widespread
rumours to the contrary, he insisted there had been no casualties in the
engagement.

The faction-ridden Movement of Democractic Forces of Casamance (MFDC) has
waged a low-level guerrilla war for the independence of Casamance,
Senegal's forested and swampy territory which lies between Guinea-Bissau
and the Gambia, since 1982. Its fighters have frequently sought refuge in
Guinea-Bissau.

For IRIN coverage of Guinea-Bissau see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Guinea-Bissau


BURKINA FASO: Government announces new census in April

The government of Burkina Faso announced plans to hold a new census in
April. This will issue each individual with a lifelong identity number
which will be required in the future as proof of nationality.

The last census, in 1996, showed that this poor landlocked country had a
population of 10.3 million. It is since projected to have risen to about
12 million.

Burkina Faso's population has swelled over the past year and a half by the
return of about 350,000 migrants from Cote d'Ivoire, where they felt
threatened following the outbreak of civil war in September 2002.

Announcing the new census on Tuesday, Interior Minister Moumouni Fabere
said the unique number issued to each individual would be recorded on a
computer database and used as proof of identity for the issue of identity
cards, passports and voter cards.

For IRIN coverage of Burkina Faso see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Burkina_Faso


GUINEA: Government sells cheap rice to bring down soaring food prices

The government of Guinea has promised to sell 20,000 tonnes of rice direct
to the public at controlled prices in an attempt to bring down soaring
food prices.

The measure was announced on state radio by a senior aide of President
Lansana Conte on Monday. "Rice will now be sold to the population right at
their doorsteps to ease the current burden placed upon them by greedy
business people," he said.

Government officials said the rice would be sold at US $12 per 50 kg bag
from special depots under the watchful eye of policemen and local
government officials. They are supposed to prevent traders from buying the
cheap rice in bulk and reselling it for more.

For IRIN coverage of Guinea see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Guinea


AFRICA: Water suppliers discuss how to bring in the private sector

African water suppliers gathered in the Ghanaian capital, Accra on Monday
to consider how partnerships with the private sector could improve
management efficiency and pump new investment into the continent's failing
water and sewerage systems.

Two thirds of all Africans lack access to clean drinking water. The
problem is equally as serious in fast expanding towns and cities as it is
in remote villages.

"We should double the current performance of our water delivery systems to
meet the UN Millennium Developmental Goals (MDGs). Investments in water
delivery are enormous. Government alone cannot achieve this," Ghana's Vice
President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, told the opening session of the five-day
meeting.

For full story see:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=39518&SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=AFRICA-GHANA


NIGER: Former Tuareg minister arrested in connection with murder

A former Tuareg rebel leader has been arrested in connection with the
murder of an official of Niger's ruling party shortly after being sacked
from the government, Radio Anfani, a private radio station in the capital
Niamey, reported on Monday.

Rhissa Ag Boula was dismissed as Minister of Tourism and Handcrafts last
Thursday after occupying the portfolio since 1997. A government spokesman
said at the time that Ag Boula's exit from the cabinet would leave him
"free to prepare his defence against certain accusations made against
him."

Radio Anfani said Ag Boula, who played a leading role in the Tuareg
rebellion in northern Niger from 1980 to 1995, was arrested on Sunday.

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


SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: Study for airport expansion and deep-water port

The United States has agreed to finance an $800,000 viability study for
expanding the international the airport of Sao Tome and Principe and
building a deep-water port in the twin-island state which is embarking on
a new era of oil exploration, the Sao Tome internet news service Vitrina
reported.

The work would be financed by the US Commerce Department and would be
undertaken by US companies, it added.

Two American oil giants, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, are expected to be
awarded the prime acreage in Sao Tome's first offshore licencing round
which is currently under way.

Sao Tome and Nigeria jointly auctioned nine offshore blocks last year
following seismic studies that indicated the presence of large oilfields
in the area where their territorial waters overlap.

For IRIN coverage of Sao Tome and Principe see:
http://www.irinnews.org/frontpage.asp?SelectRegion=West_Africa&SelectCountry=Sao_Tome_and_Principe


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

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