Weekly anb12146.txt #6

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 14-12-2000  PART #6/6

* Soudan. Diplomate américain expulsé - Le 7 décembre, les Etats-Unis ont 
annoncé que le Soudan avait ordonné l'expulsion d'un diplomate américain, 
Glenn Warren, chargé des affaires politiques à leur ambassade à Khartoum. 
Celui-ci avait rencontré huit responsables de l'opposition soudanaise, qui 
ont été interpellés. Washington envisageait une riposte à cette "mesure 
injustifiée". Les tensions entre les deux pays s'étaient déjà accentuées 
après la visite, le mois dernier, dans le sud du Soudan en proie à la 
guerre civile, de la secrétaire d'Etat adjointe américaine Susan Rice, qui 
était dépouvue de visa soudanais. (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 9 décembre 
2000)

* Soudan. Mosquée attaquée - Le soir du 8 décembre, au moins 21 personnes 
ont été tuées et une quarantaine blessées lors de l'attaque d'une mosquée à 
Omdourman, dans la banlieue de Khartoum. L'un des trois assaillants a été 
tué par la police. Dans le passé, la mosquée avait déjà été la cible 
d'attaques par des fondamentalistes musulmans. Les victimes sont des 
fidèles du groupe musulman Ansar al-Sunna, qui n'a aucune affiliation 
politique; les assaillants seraient membres de l'organisation Al-Takfir wal 
Hijra (expiation et renoncement) qui estime que la loi islamique doit être 
imposée par la force au Soudan. (D'après Le Soir, Belgique, 11 décembre 2000)

* Sudan. Presidential and parliamentary elections - 10 December: The 
presidential and parliamentary elections have been postponed for two days 
to give candidates more time to campaign. The elections were supposed to 
start on 11 December and continue for ten days to elect a president and 
members of the 360-seat National Assembly. Elections will now be held 
between 13 December and 22 December. Five candidates are running for 
president. 11 December: Sudan is pressing ahead with controversial 
presidential and parliamentary elections that all the country's main 
opposition groups are boycotting. One diplomat in Khartoum describes the 
elections as: "Re-selection, not an election". 13 December: Voting begins 
today despite a boycott by all the country's main opposition groups. The EU 
has declined an invitation to monitor the vote. (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 13 
December 2000)

* Soudan. Elections - A partir du 13 décembre, près de 12 millions de 
Soudanais étaient appelés aux urnes pour élire le président de la 
République et renouveler l'Assemblée nationale, un scrutin boycotté par 
l'opposition et qui ne pourra se tenir dans plusieurs régions tenues par la 
rébellion sudiste. Les opérations de vote doivent se terminer le 22 
décembre. Outre l'actuel président Omar El Béchir, quatre candidats sont en 
lice pour la présidentielle, dont l'ancien président Gaafar Nimeiri. Au 
Parlement, qui compte 360 élus, 270 sièges sont à pourvoir sur la base des 
circonscriptions géographiques. Un quota de 35 sièges est réservé aux 
femmes et 26 aux diplômés de l'université. 29 sièges, réservés aux 
agriculteurs, bergers, hommes d'affaires et syndicalistes, ont déjà été 
pourvus. (Le Monde, France, 14 décembre 2000)

* Uganda. Malaria prevention strategy - On 7 December, Uganda launched a 
malaria prevention programme which hinges on the provision of 
insecticide-treated nets to avert over 100,000 deaths caused by the 
anopheles mosquito-spread disease in the country annually. Health ministry 
officials confirmed that malaria is the leading cause of deaths and 
illnesses in Uganda today. Almost a quarter of deaths of children under 
five are caused by malaria. Many of these deaths can be prevented. "The 
overall objective of the Uganda national malaria control programme is to 
prevent mortality and reduce morbidity and to minimise the social and 
economic costs and losses due to malaria," Dr. Dennis Lwamafa, head of the 
programme, said. Only six districts would initially get the nets under the 
strategy tagged "Smartnet," which was co-launched in Kampala by the health 
ministry and the US Agency for International Development. The co-sponsors 
have asked the Commercial Marketing Strategies Project or CMS, which 
popularised "Protector" condoms and other reproductive health products, to 
create demand for Smartnet. USAID has provided CMS with US $250,000 for the 
marketing project. "Smartnet is a revolutionary malaria prevention net that 
does not need re-treatment for up to 22 washings and costs far less than 
what a typical family spends on malaria treatment each year," Deus 
Mubangizi, the CMS marketing manager, said. (PANA, Dakar, 7 December 2000)

* Zambia. Debt relief deal - The World Bank and International Monetary Fund 
on 8 December overcame wrangling among their large shareholder countries to 
finalise a special debt relief deal for Zambia. The deal will front-load 
the relief granted to the country under the heavily-indebted poor 
countries' (HIPC) debt relief initiative. The deal followed heated 
discussions among the fund's shareholder countries. Germany and the US dug 
in their heels over the proposal, arguing that Zambia had not signed up to 
sufficiently strict conditions for the relief and insisting on closer 
monitoring of the country's tax system. Following the 8 December agreement, 
the US continued to warn against an obsession with debt relief for its own 
sake. Tim Geithner, under-secretary at the US Treasury, said: "The success 
of the debt relief initiative depends not on the speed and depth of relief 
but on the credibility of the policies it produces in recipient countries." 
But the UK, which along with Canada and the Netherlands argued strongly in 
favour of special treatment for Zambia, praised the deal. A joint statement 
from UK chancellor Gordon Brown and development secretary Clare Short said: 
"We welcome the commitment shown by Horst Kohler, managing director of the 
IMF, to finding a solution which ensures that next year more resources will 
be available for education and health." Zambia will now pay about $150m in 
debt relief payments over the next three years, compared with $170m this 
year. Without the front-loading, its payments would have risen to about 
$180m. The problem arose because Zambia had a large number of repayments 
coming due to the IMF. Jubilee 2000, the international debt relief 
campaign, said the plan merely involved a reshuffling of Zambia's debt 
towards the end of a five-year period. "Payments now rise after the first 
few years, rather than immediately," said Lucy Matthew, spokesperson for 
Jubilee 2000. "It does not mean any further reduction in the overall debt 
burden in the long term. The creditors may think they have found a 
solution, but this is no answer to Zambia's problems." (Financial Times, 
UK, 9 December 2000)

* Zambia. Zambia wants Zimbabwe troops out - Zambia has asked Zimbabwe to 
take home 300 Zimbabwean soldiers who have fled into Zambian territory from 
fierce fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The soldiers were 
among a group of 1,000 troops fighting for the Congolese government, who 
crossed into Zambia on Tuesday after rebels captured the town of Pweto near 
the Zambian border. Zambia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Keli Walubita, said 
he had contacted the Zimbabwe High Commissioner in Lusaka about the troops 
and had "requested their repatriation back to Harare". Over 50,000 
Congolese have already flooded into Zambia since the weekend due to the 
fighting in the border area. The battle over Pweto town flared as defence 
chiefs from the six countries involved in the Congo war as well as rebel 
groups signed on Wednesday an agreement to begin withdrawing troops from 
front-line positions. The Zambian government has denied reports that an 
armed force of over 2,400 Congolese government soldiers is sheltering in 
northern Zambia. According to one report, the fleeing troops refused to 
give up their weapons to the Zambian authorities leading to suspicions that 
they are there to gain breathing space. (BBC News, 8 December 2000)

* Zimbabwe. Mugabe bans election challenge - Zimbabwean President Robert 
Mugabe has amended the country's electoral law to prevent the opposition 
from pursuing legal challenges to the results of parliamentary elections 
held in June. The amendment, which was published in the official government 
gazette on 8 December, says that, even if corrupt or illegal practices were 
committed during the poll, the election of sitting members of parliament 
cannot be overturned. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) 
was challenging the results in nearly a third of the constituencies 
contested in the June elections, largely on the grounds of violence and 
intimidation. The general elections in June were the bloodiest in 
Zimbabwe's 20 years of independence. More than 30 people were killed and an 
estimated 13,000 fled their homes, the vast majority of them opposition 
supporters. The violence formed the basis of the legal challenge to the 
results in 38 constituencies by the MDC. Had it won just three of those 
under review, the opposition would have gained a majority of the elected 
seats in Parliament. Over the past six months it had gathered a large body 
of evidence which the High Court was due to begin considering in January. 
President Mugabe has brought all that to an abrupt halt. The latest legal 
change states that in the interests of democracy, peace, security and 
stability, the Court shall not invalidate the election results even if 
there have been corrupt or illegal practices. An opposition spokesman 
described the move as another clear example of the government's refusal to 
accept the will of the Zimbabwean people. He said the ruling party knew it 
would lose many of the legal challenges. In the absence of achieving change 
through the courts, the opposition is now likely to reconsider its decision 
to postpone indefinitely its call for nationwide protests to remove 
President Mugabe from office. (BBC News, 10 December 2000)

* Zimbabwe. ZANU-PF holds an extraordinary general congress - 13 December: 
Zimbabwe's ruling party opens an extraordinary general congress today with 
one issue on everyone's lips officially off the agenda -- Robert Mugabe's 
future. Issues that are on the agenda, however -- including land reform -- 
potentially open the way for more daring critics to press for the President 
to stand down before the 2002 election. Mr Mugabe goes into the meeting 
amid open hostility from former allies in the party and the tepid backing 
of some of his own cabinet, including the finance minister who has cast 
doubts on the President's leadership. (The Guardian, UK, 13 December 2000)

* Zimbabwe. Décès de Ndabaningi Sithole - Le 12 décembre, Ndabaningi 
Sithole, homme politique zimbabwéen, est décédé, à l'âge de 80 ans, aux 
Etats-Unis où il était soigné pour une hypertension artérielle. Il était le 
président-fondateur de l'Union nationale africaine du Zimbabwe (ZANU), une 
aile dissidente de l'Union populaire africaine du Zimbabwe (ZAPU) de feu 
Joshua Nkomo, père du nationalisme zimbabwéen. Sithole avait été évincé de 
la direction du parti au milieu des années 1970 par le président Robert 
Mugabe, qui l'accusait d'avoir trahi la lutte armée pour l'indépendance de 
la Rhodésie, en négociant un accord avec les dirigeants blancs. Malgré une 
santé fragile, M. Sithole était resté actif sur l'échiquier politique de 
son pays, présidant la ZANU-Ndonga. Il y a trois ans, il avait été condamné 
pour complot visant l'assassinat du chef de l'Etat, mais n'avait pas été 
emprisonné en raison de son état de santé. (PANA, 13 décembre 2000)

* Zimbabwe. Un fermier blanc assassiné - Un fermier blanc zimbabwéen a été 
tué et son fils grièvement blessé, le 12 décembre au soir, dans une 
embuscade montée, selon le fils, par d'anciens combattants qui occupent 
leur ferme à Kwekwe, à 200 km au sud-ouest de Harare. Ancien parlementaire, 
Henry Elsworth, 70 ans, est le cinquième fermier tué depuis le début, en 
février, des occupations de fermes. (Libération, France, 14 décembre 2000)

Weekly anb1214.txt - end of part 6/6


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