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Weekly anb09267.txt #8

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 26-09-2002      PART #7/8
* Mauritanie. Appui de la Banque mondiale - La Banque mondiale a accordé à la Mauritanie un appui budgétaire de 110 millions de dollars, dans le cadre du programme de lutte contre la pauvreté initié par les autorités de Nouakchott, a révélé le 19 septembre un responsable de la banque. Il a cependant précisé que les décaissements de cet appui feront l'objet d'un accord particulier entre son institution et le gouvernement mauritanien. M. Craig, qui a qualifié la Mauritanie de "pays performant", a souligné que dans le cadre du programme de lutte contre la pauvreté, tous les indicateurs relèvent une évolution et une croissance soutenues. L'appui budgétaire est remboursable en 40 ans et assorti d'une période de grâce de 10 ans. (PANA, Sénégal, 19 septembre 2002)
* Mauritania. Woodside boosted by success - On 23 September, Woodside Petroleum of Australia reported a third successful oil well offshore Mauritania. The new find on the Banda prospect follows success at the nearby Chinguetti 4-2 well earlier this month, which was drilled in a move to assess the commerciality of the Chinguetti 1 find of last year. For Woodside, success in Mauritania would help it in the quest to dilute its dependence on Australian assets. North-west Africa is attracting increasing interest among oil explorers. Two weeks ago, South Africa's Energy Africa increased its interests offshore Mauritania through a deal with Dana Petroleum of the UK, and Australia's Fusion Oil & Gas. The group announced a placing to raise $3m to help fund further work in Mauritania. To the north, Morocco stirred controversy at the UN last year when it granted recognisance licences to TotalFinaElf and Kerr-McGee in the disputed waters of the Western Sahara. (Financial Times, UK, 24 September 2002)
* Nigeria. Seeking to recover $1bn stolen by Abacha - The Nigerian government is seeking to confiscate more than $1bn of funds stolen by Sani Abacha, the former dictator, after an out-of-court settlement with his family collapsed. The funds are in bank accounts in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and the UK. The government is also seeking Abacha funds in the US. Separately, the Financial Times has established that up to 15 banks in London are to avoid prosecution for handling Abacha funds. An investigation last year by the Financial Services Authority found 15 banks with accounts linked to the dead dictator's family had significant weaknesses in their money laundering controls. City of London police launched an investigation but decided against pushing for prosecutions. Nigeria's effort to recover funds looted from the country's central bank during Abacha's 1993-98 rule resulted in the out-of-court settlement in April. The Abacha family agreed to return $1bn of funds in exchange for the dropping of theft and money laundering charges against Mohammed Abacha, the dictator's son, and Abubakar Bagudu, a business associate. However, Mohammed Abacha rejected the settlement last week. Enrico Monfrini, a Swiss lawyer acting for the Nigerian government, said: "The global settlement agreement has collapsed because Mohammed Abacha did not honour his word. The Nigerian government has instructed me to deliver a stronger than ever battle against the Abacha family and their associates, aiming to confiscate the money which we have frozen so far and to find more money." (The BBC reports that Sani Abacha's son, Mohammed Abacha, was released from prison on 23 September, after three years in detention on embezzlement charges. On 25 September, the BBC reported that the deal to return the money from Switzerland to Nigeria, has collapsed because Mohammed Abacha refuses to sign vital legal papers releasing the money.) (Financial Times, UK, 24 September 2002)
* Nigeria. Fin de la grève au secteur pétrolier - Les activités économiques et sociales reviennent à la normale dans la plupart des villes du Nigeria qui voient disparaître petit à petit les files d'attente devant les stations d'essence, après que les travailleurs du secteur pétrolier ont mis fin lundi soir, 23 septembre, à leur "grève d'avertissement". Le lundi, les travailleurs avaient entamé une grève de deux jours pour protester contre la privatisation envisagée de la compagnie nationale du pétrole du Nigeria (NNPC) et de ses filiales. Mais ils ont retiré le mot de grève après que leurs représentants ont rencontré les autorités du ministère du Travail et de la NNPC. Le président du collectif des syndicats a déclaré: "Nous ne leur demandons pas de ne pas privatiser, mais ils ne peuvent pas tout vendre. Ils ne peuvent pas vendre l'industrie du pétrole". (PANA, Sénégal, 24 septembre 2002)
* Nigeria. Devaluation hits - Staff at the federal high court in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, find it increasingly hard to afford the imported foods sold from wooden tables dotted close to the north bank of nearby Five Cowrie Creek. Stallholders and customers report sharp rises over the past year in the prices of common tinned goods such as sardines, milk and tomatoes. "Our money is not worth anything in dollars," Daniel Agbo, a court official, says. "There are a lot of things that have the price always rising." The increases highlight a creeping devaluation of the Nigerian naira that has hurt ordinary people and led the central bank to launch landmark and controversial reforms of a currency market long notorious for abuse. The bank hopes to halt a fall in foreign currency reserves that has highlighted the vulnerability of the economy of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, to public corruption and unhelpful trends in the world oil market. "The demand for foreign exchange was getting higher and higher," the central bank says. "We felt if we were to continue that way it would deplete all our reserves." (Financial Times, UK, 24 September 2002)
* Nigeria. La procédure de destitution - Le 24 septembre, les députés nigérians ont fait état de leur détermination à poursuivre le processus de destitution du président Obasanjo, en dépit des efforts de conciliation des dirigeants du Parti démocratique populaire (PDP, au pouvoir). A l'issue d'une réunion du groupe parlementaire du PDP, les députés ont fait part de leur détermination à "maintenir la motion de destitution". Ils avaient soumis une liste de présumées violations de la Constitution dont se serait rendu coupable le président. Celui-ci a réfuté toutes ces accusations. Selon des sources parlementaires, un plan pour l'exécution de la motion de destitution a été adopté et doit commencer, le 25 septembre, par une motion destinée à annuler le pouvoir de veto du président sur la loi électorale 2002 controversée. (PANA, Sénégal, 25 septembre 2002)
* Rwanda/Uganda/Congo RDC. Withdrawals from Congo RDC - 19 September: Rwanda has ordered the withdrawal of another segment of its troops from the neighbouring Congo RDC, this time from the cities of Kabalo, Kalemie, Kongolo and Nyunzu in northern Katanga Province. The withdrawal from the four cities is scheduled to begin on 21 September, according to Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for MONUC, citing a letter received from the Rwandan government. 22 September: France's Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, says the start of a Rwandan army withdrawal has revived Congo's peace prospects and he will now talk to Congo about fulfilling its side of a peace deal. Rwandan officials say a third and final phase will begin on 27 September, removing soldiers from North and South Kivu Provinces directly bordering Rwanda. 23 September: Uganda has begun its pull out of troops from Gbadolite, the birthplace of former President Mobutu. The Ugandans say they have already pulled their forces out of Beni, but will retain a force in Bunia until the UN can improve their security presence there. (ANB-BIA, Belgium, 23 September 2002)
* Sierra Leone. Athletes on the run - In its issue of 25 September, the UK's The Guardian, published the following report. "Sierra Leone sent a team of 30 to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester, UK, this summer. But after the closing ceremony, when the time came to catch the flight back home, all but ten had disappeared. Precisely how they did it was, and has remained, a mystery. One thing is certain: athletes from a poor country had used a tournament in a rich one to do a runner; it was asylum seeking by other means. However, recently one of the team agreed to an interview. The athlete did not want his name used. He sat nervily and gulped orange juice. But he was forthright about why the team had disappeared. It had not been a carefully concocted plan, he said; it had been a revolt. Friction between the team's athletes and officials has started as soon as they arrived in Britain. They had been training for years in difficult circumstances but when they arrived at the airport in UK, there was no one to greet them. Athletes lacked the essentials for taking part in the competition and team officials were doing almost nothing to help them. Officials were arguing among themselves about who was owed favours and who was in charge. The officials often neglected to tell their athletes when and where they were supposed to be competing. Eventually, some of the athletes staged a walkout to protest against their officials". (Edited by ANB-BIA, Belgium, 25 September 2002)
* Sierra Leone. Réduction des casques bleus - Le 24 septembre, le Conseil de sécurité de l'Onu a renouvelé pour six mois le mandat de la mission en Sierra Leone (Minusil). Mais, suivant une recommandation de Kofi Annan, il a approuvé à l'unanimité une résolution demandant la réduction du nombre des casques bleus, même si le conflit au Liberia voisin continue à menacer la paix dans le pays. La Minusil regroupe 17.000 personnes. La résolution appelle à une réduction de 4.500 hommes en huit mois. -- D'autre part, le 19 septembre, le FMI a annoncé avoir approuvé un décaissement de l'ordre de 25 millions de dollars à la Sierra Leone dans le cadre de sa Facilité pour la réduction de la pauvreté et la croissance. On rappelle qu'il existe d'énormes défis sociaux à relever, notamment la réinsertion des ex-combattants, l'appui à la réinstallation de la population déplacée et les soins aux victimes de la guerre. (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 25 septembre 2002)
* Sierra Leone. UN force to stay - The UN military mission in Sierra Leone will continue for at least another eight months. The Security Council has agreed unanimously to extend the mandate for the force by six months and has said that measures to reduce the size of the 17,300 member force will begin after eight months. A UN statement said that the force would stay in a bid to support the government's efforts to continue building on the peace process. (ANB-BIA, Belgium, 25 September 2002)
* Somalia. The Puntland region detains Ethiopians - Police in the breakaway Somali territory of Puntland say they have arrested more than 100 people for entering the area illegally. They say most of the detainees are Ethiopians waiting to travel to Yemen and Saudi Arabia in search of work. Speaking by telephone from the port town of Bossaso, police chief Jama Ali Farah said that those arrested would soon be taken to court. Puntland declared itself autonomous from the rest of Somalia in 1998 after the collapse of Siad Barre's regime in 1991 plunged the country into bloodletting. In recent months, political in-fighting has intensified in Puntland as two militia factions continued to battle it out for territory and political influence in the area. (BBC News, UK, 19 September 2002)
* South Africa. Lawsuit over AIDS drugs - South African Aids activists launched legal action on 19 September against GlaxoSmithKline and Boehringer Ingelheim, accusing the pharmaceutical groups of charging "excessive prices" for their Aids drugs. The lawsuit, which has been filed to the country's competition authorities, alleges that the companies have abused the patent protection on their drugs to charge prices that have been "directly responsible for premature, predictable and avoidable deaths" of Aids patients in South Africa. The companies described the charges as baseless, but the lawsuit could lead to renewed criticism of the pharmaceutical industry and its role in the Aids epidemic in Africa. Some 4.7m South Africans are infected with HIV/Aids, more than any other country. The case has been brought by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), the lobby group that won a case in the constitutional court this year, forcing the government to supply an Aids drug for pregnant women. The Congress of South African Trades Unions and a group of health workers have also signed the complaint. They accuse the companies of breaching South African competition law by charging prices well above the "economic value" of the drugs and will ask the competition authorities to force the companies to disclose the real development costs of treatments. "This is not just a symbolic gesture," said Mark Heywood, TAC general secretary. "The companies can be ordered to lower their prices and they can also be sued by people who suffered loss as a result of past excessive pricing." (Financial Times, UK, 20 September 2002)
* South Africa. Keen to control land redistribution - The violent land invasions in Zimbabwe have weakened the South African rand, undermined foreign investor confidence and put unprecedented international pressure on the Pretoria government to deal more forcefully with its wayward northern neighbour. The invasions have also turned the spotlight on South Africa's own land redistribution problems. Yet, despite gloomy forecasts that "South Africa is next", the Zimbabwean experience appears to have given a new sense of urgency to both the government and the mainly white commercial farmers to speed up land reform through negotiation. The government in Pretoria has been criticised for its soft approach to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and his controversial policies. But there has been no hint of softness in the government's reaction to a spate of copycat land invasions in South Africa. Last year in Bredell, near Johannesburg, a few thousand squatters who tried to settle on privately owned land were swiftly evicted by police and their makeshift shacks demolished. Since then the land affairs department has made a determined effort to accelerate its land restitution programme, designed to return land to black South Africans dispossessed by removals under the apartheid regime. Some 33,510 claims -- nearly half the total lodged -- have been settled, 20,000 of them in the past 12 months. (Financial Times, UK, 20 September 2002) 

Weekly anb0926.txt - Part #7/8