Weekly anb02283.txt #7

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

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WEEKLY NEWS ISSUE of: 28-02-2002      PART #3/7

* Congo (RDC). Dialogue intercongolais  -  25 février. C'est avec plusieurs 
heures de retard sur l'horaire prévu que s'est ouvert, lundi soir à Sun 
City (Afrique du Sud), le dialogue intercongolais, prescrit par l'accord de 
Lusaka de 1999 et qui doit jeter les bases de la paix au Congo. Le 
président sud-africain Thabo Mbeki a jeté tout son poids dans la balance 
pour que l'ouverture se tienne le jour prévu, même si c'était devant une 
assistance incomplète. Reste toujours en cause la question de la 
composition de la délégation de l'opposition politique, dont on demande le 
retrait des partis favorables au président Kabila. Jean-Pierre Bemba (MLC) 
était à Sun City, mais n'a pas participé à la cérémonie d'ouverture. Par 
contre, le président Joseph Kabila et Adolphe Onusumba (RCD-Goma) y étaient 
présents. Notons encore la présence de représentants religieux 
(catholiques, protestants, kimbanguistes et musulmans) au sein des délégués 
de la société civile. Le cardinal Etsou, archevêque de Kinshasa, a présidé 
la prière avant le discours d'ouverture. Durant le dialogue, les quelque 
300 délégués auront pour mission de mettre en place un projet de 
constitution et de nouvelles institutions afin d'aboutir à des élections 
démocratiques. Il leur faudra aussi repenser une nouvelle armée, et se 
pencher sur des questions majeures comme celle de la nationalité. Le 
dialogue ne peut en principe dépasser les 45 jours, mais pourrait pourtant 
se prolonger au-delà. - 26 février. Les pourparlers ont été repoussés d'au 
moins 24 heures pour régler les problèmes de représentation. Cependant, des 
négociations ont eu lieu entre les trois belligérants (MM. Kabila, Bemba et 
Onusumba) en présence de diverses personnalités. - 27 février. Les 
négociations ont été rompues, mais une nouvelle réunion devait s'ouvrir 
dans la soirée. D'autre part, un nouveau point de friction est apparu: les 
divers camps dénoncent de violents combats dans le Nord-Katanga (entre 
Muliro et Moba), se rejetant la faute. La Monuc, qui a une représentation à 
Moba, n'a pas encore désigné de coupable.   (ANB-BIA, de sources diverses, 
27 février 2002)

* Congo (RDC). Inter-Congolese Dialogue  -  24 February: Congo's government 
accuses rebels and their Rwandan backers of breaking a year-old ceasefire. 
They say more than three battalions launched an unsuccessful attack on the 
government-held town of Moliro on 22 February.There is no independent 
confirmation of the fighting, and the leader of the rebels has denied the 
incident. 25 February: Representatives of the Democratic Republic of 
Congo's warring factions are due to meet in Sun City, South Africa for a 
new effort to bring their country out of four years of civil war. They will 
try to agree on a transitional government under which elections will be 
held. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Ruud Lubbers, has 
urged a Congolese rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, not to carry out his 
threat to boycott the meeting. Mr Bemba has complained that some parties 
attending as opposition groups are in fact fronts for the Kinshasa 
government. 25 February: The President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, urges 
warring factions in the Democratic Republic of Congo to set aside their 
differences. "We Africans have to show the world our capacity to solve our 
problems by peaceful means," he says in his opening address at peace talks 
in South Africa. President Joseph Kabila is taking part but one of the main 
rebel leaders, Jean-Pierre Bemba, has so far refused to attend. The talks 
are aimed at ending more than three years of civil war in Congo. In the 
opening ceremony, African leaders implore the Congolese to make peace so 
that their country could, in President Mbeki's words, become an African 
giant. But the ceremony is delayed by several hours because of disputes 
over who should attend. Many exiles try to enter the auditorium and 
scuffles break out with police. Up until the last minute, it is not clear 
whether President Kabila and others will attend. Mr Kabila eventually takes 
his seat, but Mr Bemba's place is conspicuously empty. The draft agenda is 
as follows: 1) Validation of delegates' mandates. 2) Formal adoption of the 
Rules of Procedure. 3) Adoption of the Agenda. 4) General Statements. 5) 
End of the war. 6) Congo's new political dispensation. 7) The new Congolese 
army. 8) Reconstruction. 9) Urgent basic economic and social programme. 10) 
National Reconciliation. 11) Guarantees for a successful ending. 12) 
Elections and Electoral issues. 13) Adoption of Resolutions. 14) Closing 
Speeches. 15) Signing of the final document. 26 February: The peace talks 
are postponed for at least a day to sort out problems of representation by 
opposition political parties, officials said. "We have been told that talks 
are postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday) and maybe longer," a spokesman for 
one of the rebel groups, RCD-Goma, said. The delay came hours after 
Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila held private talks 
with the two main rebel leaders late Monday. Officials said the talks were 
cordial, but gave no further details. 27 February: Representatives of the 
government, the UN mission in Congo, and the two main rebel groups, 
including Bemba's MLC group meet in the morning. Some media houses have 
withdrawn their coverage of the Talks, preferring to wait until the actual 
talks resume.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 28 February 2002)

* Côte d'Ivoire/UE. Reprise totale de la coopération  -  Le 21 février, 
l'Union européenne a décidé de rétablir entièrement sa coopération avec la 
Côte d'Ivoire, a-t-on appris de source officielle à Bruxelles. Cette 
décision, indique l'UE, permettra de commencer la programmation des 
ressources disponibles pour la Côte d'Ivoire dans le cadre du 9e Fonds 
européen de développement (FED), instrument financier qui lie les Quinze 
aux 77 pays ACP. L'UE a prévu une enveloppe de 264 millions d'euros d'aide 
financière directe à la Côte d'Ivoire pour la période 2002-2007, à laquelle 
s'ajoutera les reliquats des FED précédents d'un montant de 40 millions. 
Toutefois, la totalité de ces fonds ne sera débloquée que "si le processus 
d'ouverture politique se poursuit", indique l'UE. L'UE avait gelé la 
coopération avec la Côte d'Ivoire après le coup d'Etat de décembre 
1999.   (PANA, Sénégal, 21 février 2002)

* Egypt. Rail crash families infuriated  -  21 February: Egyptian riot 
police guard the mortuary in Cairo as relatives arrive for the mostly 
hopeless task of trying to identify victims of the country's worst rail 
disaster. More than 370 people died in a fire that swept through seven 
carriages of an overcrowded third-class train on 20 February. Relatives 
complain that, because the victims are poor, the government will not spend 
money on modern technology to identify the remains. "The authorities should 
use DNA and other advanced tests," says Ahmed Ali, who is looking for his 
brother. A woman dressed in the traditional garb of southern Egypt, where 
most of the victims came from, says she knew her husband was on the train, 
but cannot not identify the body. "How am I going to prove he is dead?" she 
weeps. Families say that without official death certificates they will not 
be able claim pensions or the compensation promised by the government. 22 
February: Egypt's Transport Minister and its head of railways have resigned 
in the wake of the disaster. 24 February: A mass funeral has been held for 
more than 100 unidentified victims of the train fire which killed 373 
people. Police stood guard at the cemetery walls, fearing overcrowding by 
mourners, as Egypt's top Islamic cleric Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi 
led the prayers beside 14 large graves in central Cairo. The bodies, which 
had been burned beyond recognition, will be put in so-called martyr's 
graves, reserved for unidentified victims of wars and disasters. The burial 
had been due on 23 February, but was postponed to allow relatives more time 
to identify victims. Local media reports say an electrical short-circuit is 
now thought to be the main cause of the fire, Egypt's worst train 
disaster.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 25 February 2002)

* Egypt. Brides killed in building collapse  -  Twenty-two people, 
including many brides, were crushed to death when a building collapsed in 
the Egyptian city of Damietta. The bodies were retrieved from the rubble of 
the four-storey building on 26 February. Another 25 people were injured, 
officials said. Many of the dead and injured were brides and attendants 
preparing for weddings at a beauty salon in the building, family members 
and witnesses said. A mother of one of the victims screamed wildly and beat 
her fists on the door of an ambulance covered with flowers carrying the 
coffin holding her daughter -- 17-year-old Basma el-Assany. "She was an 
angel, she prayed all the time, she used to kiss me all the time. Who is 
going to kiss me now?" said the distraught mother, outside a mosque where 
four coffins had been taken. Anti-riot police surrounded the half-collapsed 
building with only rescue workers and building residents allowed into the 
area. It was unclear how many people were in the building or what caused 
its collapse. Residents had abandoned the building days earlier fearing it 
would collapse. Authorities had marked the building, which overlooks the 
River Nile, for demolition two years ago.   (CNN, USA, 27 February 2002)

* Erythrée/Ethiopie. Processus de paix  -  Une délégation du Conseil de 
sécurité des Nations unies, forte de 15 membres et dirigée par 
l'ambassadeur norvégien Ole Peter Koiby, était attendue le 21 février au 
soir à Addis Abeba, où elle débute une tournée de travail devant la mener 
ensuite à Asmara, afin de discuter du processus de paix entre l'Ethiopie et 
l'Erythrée, indique l'agence PANA. Selon M. Koiby, la mission va souligner 
l'engagement de la communauté internationale au processus de paix et 
examiner les mesures à prendre, notamment dans les actions de déminage et 
la démarcation physique de la frontière. La délimitation de la frontière 
entre les deux pays a été en effet retardée d'un mois pour des raisons 
techniques. Un rapport de l'Onu note que des milliers de mines restent 
éparpillées dans les champs éthiopiens, empêchant ainsi le démarrage du 
programme de développement et de redressement destiné aux agriculteurs. 
Plus de 300.000 Ethiopiens des zones rurales avaient abandonné leurs 
maisons après le début de la guerre en 1998, et l'on craint de plus en plus 
que si les mines ne sont pas enlevées avant le lancement de la principale 
campagne agricole, les agriculteurs restent dépendants de l'assistance 
alimentaire. - Le 25 février, la délégation est retournée à New York. M. 
Koiby s'est félicité "qu'un compromis (...) est sur le point d'être 
obtenu". Mais selon l'agence Misna, au-delà des phrases de circonstance, la 
question est loin d'être résolue: le processus de paix n'a pas fait de 
progrès substantiels et le dialogue peine sur le thème des revendications 
territoriales réciproques.   (PANA, Sénégal, 21-25 février 2002)

* Eritrea/Ethiopia. Security Council heads to the Horn  -  21 February: The 
UN Security Council is expected to arrive in Addis Ababa this evening in an 
attempt to calm rising tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are 
emerging from a bitter two and half year border conflict. The 15 member 
council, led by Ambassador Ole Peter Kolby of Norway, will be visiting the 
two neighbours to address the ongoing peace process between the two 
neighbours, on the eve of a ruling on where the official border lies, which 
is due at the end of March. The disputed 900 kilometre border was the 
source of the Ethio-Eritrea conflict in May 1998 in which tens of thousands 
lost their lives in fighting and more than one million were displaced from 
their homes. Although Ethiopia and Eritrea signed the OAU brokered Algiers 
peace agreement in December 2000, suspicion and mistrust still dominate the 
political agendas of both governments. 22 February: Members of the United 
Nations Security Council spend more than an hour with Ethiopian Prime 
Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa. They assure him of the UN's 
willingness to continue to support the peace process. And they tell him 
they intended to extend by another six months the mandate of the UN 
peacekeeping force sent in after the bitter war fought between 1998 and 
2000. Most of the time the Security Council sits in New York making 
decisions that affect the lives of people on the other side of the world. 
But just occasionally its members travel to see for themselves the places 
they are discussing and to meet the people their decisions affect. 24 
February: United Nations Security Council envoys have ended their visit to 
the Horn of Africa in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. The Security Council 
members received a noticeably warmer welcome in Eritrea than they had on 
the Ethiopian side of the border. More senior figures were involved in the 
meetings and during their visits to the Eritrean border areas crowds were 
mobilised to welcome them. When they met Eritrean President Isayas 
Afewerki, he greeted them with cordial handshakes and emerged at the end of 
the meeting smiling, unlike his Ethiopian counterpart. But although the 
Security Council members say they have got what they came for -- a clear 
commitment by both leaders that they will respect the boundary commission's 
decision -- the assurances on both sides of the border were hedged with 
conditions.   (ANB-BIA, Brussels, 25 February 2002)

Weekly anb0228.txt - #3/7