UN EXTENDS PEACEKERS’ MANDATE IN SOUTHERN SUDAN

The Security Council on Thursday extended for another year the mandate of U.N. peacekeepers in southern Sudan who monitor compliance with a peace deal that ended Sudan’s two-decade-long civil war. All 15 members of the council voted in favor of a resolution renewing the mandate for the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) until April 30, 2010.

The council also condemned “all acts and forms of violence” against the people of Sudan, according to a copy of the U.S.-drafted resolution obtained by Reuters ahead of the vote. The council “deplores the persistent and localized violence and its effect on civilians, especially within Southern Sudan, and the continuing potential for violence,” it said.

Earlier in April at least 177 people were killed in the Jonglei state of semi-autonomous south Sudan. This was the latest episode in a vicious cycle of cattle raiding and counterattacks in southern Sudan that has plagued the oil-rich region since Sudan’s 2005 north-south peace deal put an end to one of Africa’s longest conflicts but left southern civilians heavily armed.

International analysts and officials in the southern government have worried aloud that, as well as disrupting peace, these clashes maintain a divisive atmosphere ahead of planned national elections in 2010 and a referendum on independence for the south in 2011.

The council urged the north and south to cooperate with UNMIS so that a final agreement can be reached on the borders of the oil-rich Abyei region straddling northern and southern Sudan. North and south Sudan have agreed to an arbitration process to resolve the border dispute.

SOURCED FROM REUTERS

SOMALI GOVERNMENT ADVOCATES PEACE ROLE FOR SHEIK

Somalia’s hardline opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys has an important role to play in restoring security to the country after 18 years of ruinous civil war, a government minister said. Aweys, who is on the U.S. terrorism list for alleged links to al Qaeda, returned to the Horn of Africa nation last week in his first known trip home in more than two years.

He is an influential figure for many of the Islamist rebels fighting the new government of President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed  who was Aweys’ former partner in the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) that ruled the capital and much of the south in 2006. Despite Aweys’ calls for African Union (AU) forces to leave, some analysts say exile may have mellowed him, and that he could still prove to be an important mediator with insurgents.

Aweys moved to Eritrea after Ethiopian forces chased his sharia courts group out of Mogadishu at the start of 2007. In a Reuters interview late on Thursday, Somali Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Omaar said a lot had changed since then. “He has been away some time and major developments have taken place in the country. He left because of an issue that has been resolved. Ethiopian troops have withdrawn,” Omaar said.

“Aweys is an elder and a historical figure in Somalia. I believe he has a responsibility for the wellbeing and progress of the Somali people, especially the women and children who are most affected by the war.” After leading the ICU until Addis Ababa’s offensive, Aweys and Ahmed later split, with Aweys taking over the Asmara-based Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia from Ahmed, who was elected president early this year at U.N.-led talks in Djibouti.

SOURCED FROM REUTERS

BRITAIN WANTS MORE REFORMS IN ZIMBABWE FOR INCREASE AID

Britain wants to see more reforms in Zimbabwe before it can consider large-scale aid for the shattered country, British officials said on Thursday. Zimbabwe’s Finance Minister Tendai Biti held talks in London on Thursday with Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Africa Minister Mark Malloch-Brown — the first official meetings in nine years between ministers from the two countries.

The British ministers told Biti that “not only the UK but the international community as a whole needs to see significant further progress” in implementing a power-sharing agreement, a senior British official said. Malloch-Brown told Biti that Britain would like to see a “road map” setting out actions and target dates for implementing a power-sharing agreement between President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, the official said.

“A road map of some sort … would be a useful means of continuing to give the international community confidence in the momentum behind the change that’s going on,” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. Zimbabwe’s new unity government has appealed for international help to rebuild the economy after a decade of economic contraction, hyperinflation and chronic shortages of basic goods. It says it needs about $8.3 billion for the task.

However, a second senior British official said it was too early for Britain to give extensive development aid. “We cannot at this stage simply go straight into general budget support or some broader development relationship with Zimbabwe because too much of Zimbabwe is still broken,” the official said.

SOURCED FROM REUTERS

MADAGASCAR TO HOLD ELECTION BY END OF YEAR: AU

Madagascar’s military backed government is willing to hold elections by the end of the year, the African Union (AU) said on Thursday. The army-backed administration of President Andry Rajoelina came to power in February in what many foreign leaders denounced as a coup. They have called for quick elections to restore constitutional order.

“Everybody is agreed,” AU special envoy to Madagascar, Ablasse Ouedraogo, told reporters in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa. “(They should) organise elections by the end of the year,” he said. Rajoelina had said elections would be held in October 2010.

The AU envoy was speaking after the first meeting of an international contact group formed by the 53-member body to ensure the international community takes a common position in pushing for a return to constitutional order in the huge Indian Ocean island.

Madagascar was not represented at the Addis Ababa meeting but Rajoelina’s foreign minister Ny Hasnia Andriamanjato and representatives of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana had been in Addis and had met members of the contact group. AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said Ravalomanana should be involved in talks with the Rajoelina government to work out an agreement about who should run the country.

SOURCED FRO REUTERS

SOUTH AFRICAN SWINE FLU TESTS ARE NEGATIVE

Two suspected swine flu cases in South Africa have tested negative, say health officials, meaning there are no confirmed cases of the virus in Africa. Laboratory tests on the women, from Gauteng province and Western Cape, were negative. They had recently visited Mexico, epicentre of the outbreak.

It came as the African Union prepared a continent-wide response for a pandemic. The World Health Organization has raised the swine flu alert level to warn a global outbreak may be imminent. Lucille Blumberg, of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said the unnamed Gauteng woman had been cleared.

The other woman, Susan Kok, 58, who had just returned from a month-long break in Mexico with her husband, told South Africa’s Times newspaper she was “so grateful” after also testing negative. “ We hope to establish a continental plan for prevention, and if necessary a mechanism to fight this outbreak that has not yet affected Africa ”
Jean Ping African Union Commissioner

The African Union has been working on an emergency swine flu response at a conference in Ethiopia.

SOURCED FROM BBC

SCIENTIST REVEAL AFRICAN GENE STUDY

A group of scientists have unveiled what they say is the most comprehensive study ever of African genes. Published following a decade of study, the researchers say their findings give new insight into the origins of humans.

The first humans probably evolved near the South Africa-Namibia border before migrating north, the study says. Published in the US journal Science, it aims to teach Africans on population history and aid research into why diseases hit particular groups.

The scientists examined genetic material from 121 African populations, as well as four African-American populations and 60 non-African populations. The results provided “novel insights about levels and patterns of genetic diversity in Africa, a region that has been under-represented in human genetic studies”, said Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist from the University of Pennsylvania.

The first humans most likely evolved near the South Africa-Namibia border, the team said, and migrated north out of the continent via the Red Sea. Researchers had identified 14 ancestral population clusters “that correlated with ethnicity and shared cultural and/or linguistic properties”, they said.

SOURCED FROM BBC

KENYA’S COURT DISMISSES CHURCH ARSON CASE

The high court in Kenya has dismissed a case against four men who were accused of involvement in burning to death 33 people in a church in January 2008. The judge said the prosecution had failed to make its case against the men, who were the only people charged with murder over the attack in Eldoret.

Justice David Maraga also blamed shoddy police investigating in his ruling. Eldoret is in the Rift Valley, which was hardest hit by weeks of bloodshed after the disputed December 2007 poll. The four suspects were charged two months after the town’s church was torched by a mob on New Years Day 2008.

“ I am just as outraged at the casual manner in which we are handling serious issues like insecurity in this country and by the attitude of our police force ” Justice David Maraga. Justice Maraga criticised the police and prosecuting authorities as he announced the case would be dropped on Thursday in a 45-page ruling in Nairobi.

SOURCED FROM BBC

MADAGASCAR’S PRIME MINISTER CHARGED AT LAST

The man appointed as prime minister by Madagascar’s ousted President Marc Ravalomanana has been charged with threatening the security of the state. Manandafy Rakotonirina, 70, was seized by heavily-armed soldiers and police from a five-star hotel in the capital, Antananarivo, on Wednesday.

He was named PM by Mr Ravalomanana this week, even though he was ousted from power in March by Andry Rajoelina. The army-backed takeover has been widely condemned as a coup d’etat.

Mr Rakotonirina was also charged with illegitimately declaring himself prime minister, instigating the destruction of property and illegal possession of firearms. Mr Rakotonirina is expected to appear in court along with eight others in the coming days, says the BBC’s Jonny Hogg in Antananarivo.

Mr Ravalomanana is now in exile in Swaziland, but Mr Rajoelina’s administration accuses him and his supporters of being behind recent violent protests in the capital, in which at least two people died.

SOURCED FROM BBC