Corr.: Weekly anb03085.txt #6

[anb-bia <anb-bia@village.uunet.be>]

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 08-03-2001      PART #5/6

* Senegal. Wade dismisses his Prime Minister  -  3 March: President 
Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal has dismissed Prime Minister Moustapha Niasse. 
The Justice Minister, Mrs Madior Boye, has been named as his replacement. 
The move comes only eight weeks before parliamentary elections and follows 
increasing criticism of Mr Niasse by political rivals close to the 
President. 5 March: President Wade has re-shuffled his coalition 
government. Cabinet members from Mr Niasse's Alliance of Progressive Forces 
party have been removed, but other ministers retained their posts. Two new 
parties have been brought into the coalition government.   (ANB- BIA, 
Brussels, 6 March 2001)

* Somalia. Warlords opposed to government meet  -  5 March: Somali faction 
leaders opposed to Somalia's transitional government are having talks in 
Ethiopia to seek reconciliation and form a common front. Those taking part 
include three leaders from Mogadishu -- Hussein Aideed, Osman Hassan Atto 
and Musse Sudi Yalahow -- who last week said they had decided to resolve 
their differences and seek to replace the government led by the interim 
President, Abdiqasim Salad Hassan. Other faction leaders are expected to 
join the talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. Although Ethiopia has 
said it supports the new government in Mogadishu, relations have been 
strained in recent months. In January, the Somali Prime Minister, Ali 
Khalif Galayadh, accused Ethiopia of trying to stoke Somalia's civil war by 
arming militias. 7 March: Several more faction leaders have arrived in 
Ethiopia for the talks. Somalia's interim government has accused Ethiopia 
of intervening in Somali affairs by allowing the talks to take place in 
Addis Ababa.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 7 March 2001)

* South Africa. Suing the Government  -  4 March: Nearly every major 
pharmaceutical company in the world is suing the government of South Africa 
in a case viewed as a landmark in the battle to get cheap AIDS medication 
to many of the world's poorest countries. The more than three dozen 
companies argue that a 1997 South African law allowing the government to 
import or produce cheap, generic versions of patented drugs is too broad 
and unfairly targets drug manufacturers. They plan to ask the Pretoria High 
Court to invalidate the law in hearings beginning on 5 March. The 
government, AIDS activists and international human rights groups say the 
drug companies are trying to wring profits out of a public health nightmare 
that threatens to devastate South Africa and dozens of other impoverished 
countries. The case is about whether "the commercial interests of the 
companies or the human rights of the people who are trying to stay alive" 
is more important, said Belinda Coote, regional director of the relief 
agency Oxfam. More than 25 million of the 36 million people infected with 
HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the world's most impoverished 
regions. In 2000, 2.4 million people in the region died from the effects of 
AIDS. These statistics, coupled with a perception that some drug companies 
care more about stopping the spread of generic drugs than the spread of 
HIV, have damaged the industry's standing. 5 March: The presiding judge in 
South Africa's landmark trial to determine whether the government can 
override pharmaceutical patents, throws the process into confusion by 
saying that the case might be outside his jurisdiction. Separately, it has 
emerged that the Southern Africa Development Community will for the first 
time meet the five companies that last year offered to slash the price of 
HIV drugs. The meeting, scheduled to take place on 24 March, will discuss 
an offer to cut the price of the life-saving drugs at the centre of the 
South African controversy by as much as 90 per cent. Thousands of 
protesters, who say the companies are putting patents before lives, march 
through the streets of Pretoria today. Demonstrations also take place in 
Cape Town and Durban. 6 March: The court case that saw the South African 
government in the dock, accused by the world's leading pharmaceutical 
companies of violating their patent rights, has been adjourned to April 18. 
Bernard Ngoepa, the presiding judge at the Pretoria High Court, granted the 
postponement to give the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of South 
Africa (PMA) time to reply to points raised by the Treatment Action 
Campaign (TAC), an AIDS activists group. 7 March: Merck, a leading US 
pharmaceuticals company, says it would offer Crixivan and Stocrin, its two 
anti- retroviral medicines, for $600 and $500 respectively per patient a 
year in the developing world.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 8 March 2001)

* Afrique du Sud. Procès sur les produits pharmaceutiques  -  Le 5 mars, 
s'est ouvert à Pretoria le procès très attendu de l'Association des 
industries pharmaceutiques contre l'Etat sud-africain. Cette action 
judiciaire conteste une clause d'une nouvelle loi sur les médicaments, 
permettant les importations parallèles et les achats de produits 
"génériques" (copies moins onéreuses) contre le sida par le ministre 
sud-africain de la Santé. Cette loi, promulguée fin 1997, n'est pas entrée 
en vigueur à cause de l'action en justice. Les grands groupes 
pharmaceutiques veulent protéger leurs licences. Les ONG s'insurgent contre 
des enjeux strictement financiers. Des milliers de manifestants ont défilé 
dans les rues de Pretoria pour l'accès aux médicaments, avec à leur tête 
l'archevêque catholique de la ville, Mgr George Daniel, et l'évêque 
anglican, David Beetge. - Le procès a été ajourné au 18 avril, après que le 
tribunal eut accepté d'entendre une ONG d'aide au sida qui plaidera la 
"justification", en certains cas, de la violation des brevets. - Rappelons 
encore que le 28 février, le secrétaire général de l'Onu, Kofi Annan, ainsi 
que les responsables de la Banque mondiale et d'autres agences de l'Onu, 
ont annoncé leur intention de soutenir une campagne en faveur de l'accès 
aux médicaments génériques contre le VIH/SIDA dans les pays du sud. Le 7 
mars, le géant américain de pharmacie Merck a annoncé qu'il envisage de 
nouvelles baisses de prix importantes pour ses médicaments antisida à 
destination de l'Afrique (une initiative, a reconnu son PDG, destinée à 
restaurer l'image d'une industrie pharmaceutique sourde aux souffrances de 
millions de personnes). (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 8 mars 2001)

* Sudan. One million without food, water  -  1 March: "The factional 
fighting in southern Sudan could widen into a devastating famine unless the 
US intervenes diplomatically with rebel forces and others", Human Rights 
Watch says. In a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Human Rights 
Watch calls on the Bush administration to use its influence with the 
southern factions to stave off the potential crisis. 7 March: Aid agencies 
say that as many as 1 million people are without food or water in southern 
Sudan after fleeing government-rebel fighting in the region. "A million 
people are living under the nightmare of extreme hunger and thirst," 
Monsignor Cesare Mazzolari, a bishop in the region, tells the Catholic 
missionary news agency Misna in Rome. "These people are on the brink of 
death". The Bishop says the worst situation is in Bahr el-Ghazal in 
south-central Sudan, close to the border with the Central African Republic, 
where several people have already died of thirst and there is the threat of 
cholera and other diseases. He says fighting in the region in recent weeks 
has left many soldiers dead, and their poorly buried bodies threaten to 
contaminate the water supply when rains come. "The people are so weak from 
lack of food that they are facing a famine like that which occurred in 
1998". Martin Dawes, UNICEF's spokesman for southern Sudan, says the United 
Nations is expecting a bad year in Bahr el-Ghazal, with 600,000 people in 
need of food aid. He adds that there has also been an upsurge of fighting 
in the region. "There are high numbers of people once again on the edge of 
disaster. A huge number of people are at risk. We've seen it before. We 
don't want to see it again." Dawes says the area of concern is not just 
confined to Bahr el-Ghazal but stretches into other southern regions like 
Equatoria and Western Upper Nile. "In some areas", he says, "people have no 
water and are surviving on liquid from cactus plants".   (ANB-BIA, 
Brussels, 8 March 2001)

* Tanzania/Zanzibar. Killings and torture  -  Amnesty International is 
calling on the Tanzanian Government to establish an independent and 
impartial inquiry into the recent killings, systematic torture and mass 
arbitrary arrests of opposition party supporters in Zanzibar, during and 
after the demonstrations of 27 March 2001. Preliminary findings by an 
Amnesty International mission to Tanzania confirm reports of torture, 
including rape and beatings, as well as indiscriminate and disproportionate 
use of force against civilians, including women and children.   (Amnesty 
International, 1 March 2001)

* Tanzania/Zanzibar. Speaker and the Opposition  -  Zanzibar's House of 
Representatives, which has been taking a low profile in the island's recent 
political affairs, has finally come out into the open. The House's Speaker, 
Pandu Ameir Kificho, is now calling for the banning of the main opposition 
party, the Civic United Front (CUF). Kificho, who has branded the CUF as a 
terrorist group, has asked the registrar of political parties to determine 
whether the party still merits to have its name on the list of political 
parties. The Speaker has told a parliamentary committee on security, that 
the CUF is taking part in various law- breaking activities and that it is 
posing a threat to peace and national solidarity. He says the opposition 
party is sabotaging government's developmental efforts and that is has 
failed to fulfil its political obligation of serving the masses. The 
Speaker's step comes as a renewed effort by the government to take 
eliminate the opposition party from the political scene.   (Sheen Musa, 
ANB-BIA, Zanzibar, 5 March 2001)

* Uganda. Coffee growing still lucrative  -  Ugandan coffee farmers still 
regard coffee growing as lucrative, unlike the middlemen who have fallen on 
bad times. According to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA), 
farmers still get 75% of what is offered on the World market and it is one 
reason why coffee growing is expanding in Uganda. According to the UCDA 
Managing Director, Tress Buchanayandi, coffee expansion has grown by 30,000 
ha in recent years in addition to the existing 272,000ha in the country. 
The expansion has mainly been in eastern and western Uganda. The UCDA has 
an ambitious $1.5m programme that in due time, will establish 500 nurseries 
with a national target of 22m plantlets. So far, farmers have bought 3m of 
these. In three years, coffee production in the country will have reached 
6m bags. At the moment it is estimated around 4.5m bags.   (Crespo Sebunya, 
ANB-BIA, Uganda, 1 March 2001)

* Ouganda. Présidentielle au 12 mars  -  1er mars. L'élection 
présidentielle ougandaise, prévue le 7 mars, a été reportée au 12 mars, en 
raison d'anomalies dans les listes d'électeurs, a annoncé le 1er mars le 
président de la commission électorale nationale, M. Cassujja. Les listes 
électorales ont été affichées cette semaine, mais nombre d'Ougandais se 
sont plaints de ne pas y voir leur nom. Les six candidats au scrutin ont 
accepté ce report, a indiqué M. Cassujja. - 5 mars. Selon Human Rights 
Watch, des violences, des arrestations arbitraires et des actes 
d'intimidation risquent d'entacher la crédibilité du scrutin. 
L'organisation de défense des droits de l'homme estime que Yoweri Museveni, 
le président sortant, "essaie de remporter cette élection en brutalisant 
l'opposition" par la violence, les arrestations et les mesures 
d'intimidation. Les militants de Museveni ont également été victimes 
d'actes d'intimidation et d'agressions, mais à un niveau moindre, a précisé 
HRW.   (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 6 mars 2001)

* Uganda. Presidential election  -  26 February: On 26 February, Uganda's 
New Vision reported that President Museveni's government is committed to 
holding free and fair elections. The following day, Kenya's Daily Nation 
carried a story that the display of Uganda's voters' registers has begun, 
as controversy deepens over what critics say is a swollen voters' register. 
1 March: The presidential election has been postponed until 12 March. The 
National Electoral Commission says the delay will allow more time for the 
display of voting registers and the distribution of voting cards. The 
Commission also needs more time to check lists of eligible voters are 
up-to-date. The nominally pro-government daily The New Vision says all the 
candidates had complained to the Electoral Commission about irregularities, 
including the multiple registration of some individuals, the deletion from 
voting lists of others and the registration of minors. An official in 
President Yoweri Museveni's campaign team is quoted as saying: "The 
registration of children and double registration were done deliberately by 
agents sympathetic to Kizza Besigye," the main opposition candidate. Dr. 
Besigye's team in turn complains that voters had been denied access to the 
voting registers. Opposition candidates have accused Mr Museveni's team of 
pursuing a campaign of intimidation, using the police and armed forces, 
while it has hit back with its own accusations of abuse. The latter part of 
the election campaign also coincides with the start of the withdrawal of 
Ugandan troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo, prompting army 
commander Maj-Gen Jeje Odongo to "deny rumours that the troops are being 
withdrawn to impress the electorate in the looming polls", The Monitor 
reports. 5 March: Human Rights Watch says that serious human rights 
concerns in the lead-up to Uganda's 12 March presidential elections, shed 
doubt on whether the election will be free and fair.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 
6 March 2001)

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