27 KILLED IN DARFUR

Sudanese troops have opened fire inside a Darfur refugee camp, leaving 27 people dead, a rebel group has said. Some 100 government trucks surrounded the Kalma camp, home to some 90,000 people who have fled their homes in Darfur, a rebel spokesman told the BBC.

There is no independent confirmation of the reports but international sources have been told that Sudan wants to disarm the camp’s residents. More than two million people have fled five years of conflict in Darfur.

Ahmed Abdel Shafie, who heads a faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army, told the BBC that the government wants to force people to leave the camp. Another rebel leader puts the number of those killed higher. Abdel Wahed Mohamed al-Nur, said that 50 people had been killed.

“This really is a catastrophe. People are being killed while the world just watches,” he said. Reports from inside the camp put the toll lower. Adam Mohamed, a community leader in Kalma, near South Darfur’s capital Nyala, told the AFP news agency that eight people had been killed and 30 wounded.

A spokesman for the joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur said they had sent patrols to check the reports.

Sudan’s government has accused armed rebel supporters of taking refuge inside the camp while residents have accused government-backed militias of mounting a series of raids on the settlement. The reports came on the day that the new joint UN-African Union mediator Djibril Bassole was due to arrive in Khartoum to take up his position.

‘WE DID NOT KILL ANYONE’

Nigeria’s most prominent militant group on Monday accused the military of killing 12 civilians in a boat attack in the restive Niger Delta, but the army said nobody was hurt in such an incident.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, responsible for attacks that have cut a fifth of Nigeria’s oil output since early 2006, said soldiers with the Joint Task Force shot at a commercial transport boat in Bayelsa state on Sunday evening.

“MEND will not issue any threat over this painful waste of lives, but will retaliate at the appropriate time before notifying the public,” the group said in an emailed statement.

Lieutenant Colonel Chris Musa, commander of the military taskforce in Bayelsa, said soldiers fired warning shots in the air when the boat approached them but no one was hurt or killed.

“There was no shootout, no incident and the boat and its passengers moved on,” Musa said.

Clashes between militants and the military have become increasingly frequent in the Niger Delta, the heart of the OPEC member’s oil sector.

MEND, split between a number of factions, says it is fighting for development and greater local control of the delta’s resources.

But the breakdown of law and order in the region has allowed criminal gangs to thrive by kidnapping for ransom and stealing crude oil.

Nigerian President Umaru Yar’Adua, under intense pressure to bring order to the Niger Delta, named new heads of the army, navy and air force on Wednesday in his first major military shake-up since taking office more than a year ago

ZIMBABWE’S NEW SPEAKER

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party won the vote for parliament speaker on Monday, dealing a blow to President Robert Mugabe in a post-election power struggle Lovemore Moyo of the Movement for Democratic Change got 110 votes in the 210 member assembly, giving the opposition one of the most powerful positions in Zimbabwean politics for the first time since independence in 1980.

Moyo comfortably beat a candidate put up by a breakaway opposition faction and backed by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party, a sign the veteran leader might be unable to use parliament to force his way in deadlocked power-sharing talks.Opposition MPs broke into song after the result, mocking Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party as a dying party.

Negotiations between ZANU-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC have stalled over what the opposition says is Mugabe’s refusal to give up executive power after 28 years in office.The deadlock, in spite of strong regional and international pressure for a deal, has dampened hopes of an agreement that could end the political crisis and revive the broken economy.

In Zimbabwe’s hung parliament, the speaker will be able to take charge of controversial debates if there is no power-sharing deal. The speaker can also act as president in the absence of the vice president or Senate president.Analysts said the opposition’s victory in the secret vote meant that either some members of ZANU-PF or parliamentarians from Arthur Mutambara’s breakaway opposition faction were ready to support Tsvangirai

ARMS HAND-OVER FIASCO

Dozens of mines have exploded as they were being handed over by Tuareg rebels to the government of Niger. One person was killed and 40 seriously injured when a man accidentally stepped on one of the mines, setting off a chain reaction, officials say.

Among the injured is the governor of the Zinder region where the arms handover was taking place. The Tuareg rebel Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ) last week denied it would end their year-long fight.

The dead man was a government official who had been acting as an intermediary between the government and the rebels, the Associated Press news agency reported.

The MNJ says it is fighting for greater autonomy and for a larger share of uranium revenue. MNJ leader Aghaly ag Alambo last week denied a media report his fighters would lay down their arms and participate in a peace process mediated by Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi.

Tuareg militants in Mali and Niger have been engaged in sporadic armed struggles for several decades. But analysts are divided over whether the Tuareg revolts have been driven by genuine political grievances or efforts to defend control of drugs, arms and migrant-smuggling routes. Tuaregs are a historically nomadic people living in the Sahara and Sahel regions of North Africa…leave your comments below

‘COMPANY DOES NOT EXIST’

Kampala contracted a non-existent Libyan firm to export garments to the US under the US sponsored Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, The East African has learnt.

While the Uganda government purported to have entered into an agreement with LAP Textiles Ltd, a subsidiary of the Libya Africa Investment Portfolio — LAP Mauritius, to take over the AGOA textiles business, the Public Accounts Committee has been told that the firm did not legally exist at the time a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the two parties.

The Uganda government claims that on June 25, 2007, it contracted the Libyan firm to produce and supply garments to the US under the AGOA arrangement. Kampala also signed off its stake in a textiles factory to the latter.

According to the MoU between the two parties, LAP was described as a private limited liability company incorporated under the laws of Uganda set up to carry out the business of textile manufacture, spinning and weaving among others.

The agreement shows that the Libyan firm acquired a 60 per cent stake in a textiles facility previously managed by Apparel Tri-Star (Uganda) whose services had been terminated over mismanagement.

The other shares were distributed between the Uganda government (35 per cent) and one Kananathan Veluppillai (five per cent). Mr Veluppillai was the managing director of the defunct Tri-Star.

But an inquiry from the Registrar General through Katuntu and Company Advocates, which the PAC engaged to investigate the deal, has established that the Libyan firm had no legal base in Uganda at the time it was engaged.

“I have searched our records and established that M/s Libya Investment Portfolio-Lap Mauritius does not exist on our company register,” Darius Ruta observed in a letter dated March 26, 2008 addressed to Katuntu and Company Advocates, which he signed on behalf of the Registrar General.

Instead, Mr Ruta noted that another firm, M/s Lap Textiles Ltd, was incorporated on February 26, 2008 and issued certificate number 96255.

ZIMBABWEAN MP’S DOCKED

Two Zimbabwean MPs have been arrested, as they were due to be sworn in five months after disputed elections, an opposition spokesman says. The police went into parliament and pulled them out, said Nelson Chamisa.

He said the police wanted to arrest 15 MPs, to ensure the ruling party wins the vote for the speaker of parliament. Zanu-PF lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence in the the March polls. Power-sharing talks are currently deadlocked.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has warned that the opening of parliament could jeopardise the talks. The balance of power in the new parliament is held by a breakaway faction from Mr Tsvangirai’s MDC.

The election of a speaker is expected to be a close vote. In the House of Assembly, Mr Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has one seat more than Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF, while a smaller MDC faction has 10 seats.

The MDC had warned that 15 of its MPs would not attend the swearing-in ceremony, as they were in hiding following a state-sponsored campaign of violence.

But a party spokesman said they would turn up.