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 Round-Up 312
7 - 13 January 2006


CONTENTS:

CHAD: Government denounces move to freeze oil account
LIBERIA: Ex-rebel official, Taylor's former son-in-law to head new
   parliament
CHAD-SUDAN: Both sides express readiness to talk as tensions linger
NIGERIA-SUDAN: Worsening security, lack of progress bog down Darfur
   talks
NIGERIA: In overcrowded prisons, survival is a daily battle
COTE D'IVOIRE: Burkina Faso nationals arrested, shot dead after attack
   on barracks


CHAD: Government denounces move to freeze oil account

The Chadian government has reacted angrily to Citibank's freezing the
escrow account for the country's oil revenues - a move resulting from
Chad's recent changes to poverty reduction laws integral to a loan
agreement with the World Bank.

"It is inadmissible that a country be blocked from accessing revenues
generated by the sale of its own natural resources," Chad Finance
Minister Abbas Mahamat Tolli said in a communique on Friday.

The World Bank last week halted all new loans to Chad and suspended the
disbursement of US $124 million already earmarked for the country, after
the government scrapped key parts of a law designed to ensure that oil
profits be used to help the poor.

Citibank's action is the automatic consequence as laid out in Chad's
agreement with the World Bank, Bank spokesperson Marco Mantovanelli said
on Friday.

The poverty reduction measures - including a trust fund for future
generations - were required by the World Bank for support of the US
$3.7-billion oil pipeline that snakes from southern Chad to a mooring
buoy in the Atlantic Ocean off Cameroon.

The Chad-Cameroon oil project was touted as a model for ensuring that a
country's oil wealth be used for improving the lives of the poor. In
modifying its oil revenue management law, Chad did away with the "future
generations fund" and opened the way for funds destined for poverty
reduction to go to state security.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51113


LIBERIA: Ex-rebel official, Taylor's former son-in-law to head new
parliament

Liberia's new bi-cameral legislature on Friday elected key figures from
the country's violent past to head the two chambers in the country's
first post-war parliament.

Representative Edwin Snowe, former son-in-law of notorious ex-president
Charles Taylor was elected as Speaker of the 64-member House of
Representatives.

The speaker is the third in rank in the government hierarchy after the
president and vice president.

Senator Isaac Nyanebo, a former advisor and Secretary General of the
rebel group, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, which
battled the government from 1999 to 2003, was elected Senate President
Pro Tempore.

Snowe is one of four newly elected parliamentarians who are on a UN
Security Council Travel Ban and Asset Freeze List for "on-going ties
with Charles Taylor."

A fortnight ago, the UN enforced the ban on Snowe and three of his
colleagues - Taylor's former wife and two former armed commanders - by
stopping them from travelling to Ghana to attend a World Bank-sponsored
training session for members of Liberia's new parliament.

Meanwhile, Liberia's exiting transitional parliament last week passed a
law enabling the country's incoming elected government to carry out a
financial audit of the transitional government, which has been plagued
with corruption.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51112


CHAD-SUDAN: Both sides express readiness to talk as tensions linger

Sudan joined Chad on Tuesday in offering to open talks to defuse
mounting tension along their joint border, but the two sides still
appeared far apart.

At the weekend, Chad said it was ready to talk to Sudan but only if
Khartoum agreed to a set of conditions, including the disarmament of
Chadian rebels N'djamena claims are operating on the Sudanese side of
the border.

But Sudan's Foreign Minister Lam Akol on Tuesday denied the presence of
Chadian rebels in his country in an interview on Radio France
Internationale. "We don't have Chadian rebels in Sudan to disarm," Akol
said. "We have been keen to see that there [are] no armed dissidents -
that are roaming in Sudan."

Chad President Idriss Deby has been facing dissension within the armed
forces, with some troops deserting to join rebel forces in eastern Chad
near Sudan. The government has accused Khartoum of backing the rebels
and of joining in attacks.

Akol said Sudan favoured dialogue with Chad to overcome the tension, he
said. "We want to sit with them anytime. There is no other way except to
solve the problem peacefully."

With an African Union summit in Khartoum less than two weeks away,
African leaders have been working to neutralise lingering hostility.
After a meeting at the weekend in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, with
Muammar Gaddafi, African Union Commission head Alpha Konare and other
regional leaders, Deby set four conditions for peace talks.

He said the Sudanese government must: disarm Chadian deserters and other
armed groups in Sudan, hand deserters over to UNHCR, end Sudanese
militia incursions into Chad and compensate victims of cross-border
attacks by Sudanese militia.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51022


NIGERIA-SUDAN: Worsening security, lack of progress bog down Darfur
talks

Talks to end the bloody conflict in Darfur have been suspended for a
week to respect a Muslim holiday, mediators said on Monday, but there is
little sign of progress as the security situation in the western Sudan
region worsens and the two sides fail to agree on key aspects of sharing
power.

African Union (AU) officials called off the peace negotiations in Abuja
on Sunday to allow Muslim delegates from the Sudanese government and two
Darfur rebel movements to celebrate the Eid el-Kabir festival.
Discussions are set to resume on 15 January.

Mediators had hoped that this seventh round of talks between Khartoum,
the Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement (SLA/M) and the Justice and
Equality Movement (JEM), which began in November, would yield a
breakthrough in the conflict which has been raging for three years.

But they admit that the only tangible result so far has been keeping the
sides talking.

"We have been here for more than a month now but I can't even report any
progress. It's been very slow," one of the senior AU officials, Sam
Ibok, told reporters at the weekend.

The Darfur conflict erupted in early 2003 when JEM and SLA/M took up
arms against Khartoum to end what they call the neglect and oppression
of the mainly black inhabitants of Darfur, a semi-desert region the size
of France. The Sudanese government responded by backing Arab militias
known as the Janjawid.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51006


NIGERIA: In overcrowded prisons, survival is a daily battle

As visitors approach the death row block at Kaduna's central prison in
northern Nigeria, a sea of hands waving tin cups automatically jerk
through the bars of the dark cells.

"Get back!" shouts the prison guard at the 118 detainees crammed inside
a dilapidated building originally meant to house 33. Up to three inmates
live in less than four square metres of space. An overpowering stench of
urine and mould billows out into the courtyard.

Rights organisations working in Nigerian prisons - and even prison
officials themselves - say the conditions of death row inmates do not
fulfil even minimum international human rights standards.

In Kaduna prison, death row inmates are locked up all day long, said
Festus Okoye, executive director of Human Rights Monitor (HRM), a group
based in the northern city. "They are allowed out only rarely, for a few
minutes, one by one," he said. Meanwhile some prisoners collect the
buckets used as toilets.

Most of the death row inmates are utterly alone and never receive
visitors - their families living too far away and having abandoned them
for fear of being associated with their crimes, rights group sources
say. Some simply cannot pay the 'visiting rights' fee charged by the
wardens.

Nigeria countrywide has 548 prisoners awaiting capital punishment - 10
of them women - among a total 40,000 detainees, according to Ernest
Ogbozor of Prisoners Rehabilitation and Welfare Action (PRAWA),
Nigeria's largest prisoners' rights organisation.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51047


COTE D'IVOIRE: Burkina Faso nationals arrested, shot dead after attack
on barracks

In a sign of continued ethnic tension in Cote d'Ivoire, a number of
nationals from Burkina Faso were arrested and several shot dead
following a mysterious attack against two military camps in Abidjan
early this month, diplomats and other sources told IRIN on Friday.

A diplomat at the Burkina Faso embassy said paramilitary gendarmes had
detained between 15 and 30 Burkinabe men after the 2 January attack and
were holding them in a barracks in Abidjan, the economic capital.

The diplomat also said that the bodies of three Burkinabe men were found
shot dead last Friday, three days after the attack against the military
camps. The three have been identified.

The three Burkinabe men were killed after residents in a lagoon-side
area of Abidjan requested the intervention of a special state security
force known as CECOS on the suspicion that the men were "rebels," the
diplomat said.

Cote d'Ivoire has been split in two for more than three years into a
rebel-held north and government-controlled south. The Burkina
government, as well as the large contingent of Burkinabe migrant workers
living in Cote d'Ivoire, are often accused of siding with the
insurgents.

Referring to the arrests and shootings, a diplomat said: "This is not
new, it's a well-established pattern that the Burkinabe are targeted
after attacks."

"But the degree of xenophobia is rising - it doesn't take much anymore
before one of our nationals is arrested." He said two more corpses had
been found in the last few days but not identified.

The Ivorian army was not available for comment.  Neither the government
nor the army has yet offered a detailed explanation of the circumstances
of the hours-long 2 January assault in which unidentified gunmen
attacked two military camps on the eastern outskirts of Abidjan, leaving
10 people dead.

Full report http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=51102


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