IRIN-WA Weekly 230 covering 28 August- 3 September 2004
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: Disarmament to end in October
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Trial suspended indefinitely
NIGERIA: Troops patrol Port Harcourt
CHAD: Cholera kills 123
WEST AFRICA: Plans for 2005 launch of new regional currency confirmed
LIBERIA: Disarmament to end in October
The head of the UN mission in Liberia, Jack Klein, said on Wednesday that the country’s disarmament process would officially end on 30 October, two months ahead of the December deadline that had originally been set. After that date, any former fighter found with weapons would be prosecuted.
The UN mission kicked off disarmament on 15 April after a false start in December. To date, 71,000 combatants have been disarmed, almost double the initial UN estimate. That figure could reach 100,000 by the end of the exercise. While soldiers have adhered to the process, their weapons have not flowed in as expected.
According to officials, only one in three people registering for disarmament is actually handing in a weapon and Liberians worry about hidden stocks of rifles and rocket launchers.
The new disarmament deadline could boat well for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which plans t repatriate 50,000 Liberian refugees from neighbouring countries as part of an organized programme that will start on schedule on 1 October.
UNHCR head in Liberia, Moses Okello, told IRIN this week that his organization had initially planned to repatriate 100,000 of the estimated 350,000 Liberians by the end of 2004, but it reduced the figure due to security concerns and inadequate infrastructures. However funding remains a problem, as donors had so far only contributed US $17 million of the $39 million needed to finance the launch of the refugee repatriation programme.
IRIN coverage on Liberia
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Trial suspended indefinitely
A court in Equatorial Guinea suspended on Tuesday the trial of 14 suspected foreign mercenaries accused of trying to topple President Teodoro Obiang Nguema because more time was needed to weight evidence from abroad. The judge did not say when proceedings would resume.
The prosecution, which has demanded the death penalty of the alleged ring-leader, asked for the suspension In light of evidence emerging from outside Equatorial Guinea, like the arrest of Mark Thatcher, the son of former other British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher is suspected of helping finance the plot, while international arrest warrants have been requested for two other people.
Nick du Toit, the alleged ringleader, has admitted taking art in the coup plot against Nguema. The 14 defendants -- eight South Africans and six Armenians -- were arrested in Malabo on 6 March. They were charged with paving the way for a planeload of South African mercenaries who were arrested 24 hours later in Zimbabwe, allegedly on their way to Equatorial Guinea.
Last Friday all but one of the 67 suspected mercenaries held in Zimbabwe were absolved of attempting to procure arms for the alleged coup in the former Spanish colony which is Africa's third-largest oil producer.
IRIN coverage on Equatorial Guinea
NIGERIA: Troops patrol Port Harcourt
Nigeria has deployed extra troops to the southeastern city of Port Harcourt to clamp down on escalating gang warfare in the country's most important oil centre, military officials said on Friday.
Heavily armed soldiers, naval officers and marine police were first deployed to Port Harcourt, the hub of Nigeria's oil industry, after last weekend gun battles between rival gangs left at least three people dead. Those responsible for the violence are suspected to be members of rival armed gangs linked to powerful political interests in the region.
The oil rich Niger Delta, with Port Harcourt at its centre, produces almost all of Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. But industry experts reckon that up to 10 percent is lost to gangs who tap into pipelines and fill barges with stolen crude to sell to tankers waiting offshore.
A study commissioned by Shell from international security company WAC Global Services earlier this year estimated that 1,000 people were killed in the Niger Delta every year. This puts violence in the region on the same scale as that it Colombia and Chechnya, it said, threatening both the oil industry in Nigeria, the world's seventh largest producer, as well as national security.
IRIN coverage on Nigeria
CHAD: Cholera kills 123
The Chadian government announced that 123 people have died of cholera in western Chad and that 2,895 cases of the water-borne disease have been reported since an epidemic broke out at the start of the rainy season in mid-June. The cholera outbreak started in Guitte, a fishing village on Lake Chad on 16 June, but it subsequently spread south to N'djamena, a city of nearly one million people. Last week, it launched massive public awareness campaign in the media and sent social workers to villages in areas affected by the epidemics. The government also appealed for US $2.1 million to fund an action plan based on an estimated 5,000 cases of cholera. The last major cholera outbreak in Chad occurred in 2001 when a total of 5,244 cases were recorded.
The United Nations has tripled the amount of money it needs from international donors to help Darfur refugees who fled to neighbouring Chad, because more and more people have arrived in the impoverished dustbowl and the rainy season is making aid operations more expensive. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement on Friday, it now needed $166 million, compared to the $54 million it requested in March.
Since March, the number of Darfuris seeking refuge in Chad had almost doubled to 200,000 and as a result, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates it now needs $105 million compared with $20 million five months ago. The World Food Programme, which has more than doubled its appeal from $19 million in March to $42 million today, will feed Chadian women and children living near the camps as well as the refugees themselves.
UNHCR has also signed an agreement with the Chadian government to station 180 policemen in nine camps for Sudanese refugees in order to maintain order and prevent the camps from being infiltrated by armed combatants. The agreement was signed following riots in the heavily overcrowded Farchana and Breidjing refugee camps in July, during which several humanitarian workers were attacked and two were injured. Chadian police subsequently entered the Farchana refugee camp to search for weapons on 22 July and shot dead two people during the ensuing disturbances.
IRIN coverage on Chad
WEST AFRICA: Plans for 2005 launch of new regional currency confirmed
Six countries in West Africa said on Friday they were still determined to launch a common currency on 1 July 2005 despite slow progress towards achieving this goal. It has already been delayed by two years.
Guinean president Lansana Conte, who took over as the new chairman of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ), said after a summit meeting of the organisation in Conakry that much remained to be done before the new currency, the Eco, could be launched in 10 months time.
But he and several other speakers at the meeting stressed their determination not to miss next year's deadline following the organisation's failure to launch a single currency by the initial target date of 2003.
"If this venture fails again, then we have failed our citizens," said Gambian President Yayah Jammeh
The WAMZ is dominated by Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and most populous country, with an estimated 126 million people.
Its other members are Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea.
The organisation is dominated by English-speaking countries.
Guinea is the only Francophone member of the grouping. Along with Mauritania, it opted out of the CFA franc currency shared by all other former French colonies in West and Central Africa.
The WAMZ was formed in 2000 to try and establish a strong stable currency to rival the CFA franc, whose exchange rate is tied to that of the euro and is guaranteed by the Bank of France.
The eventual goal is for the CFA franc and Eco to merge, giving all of West and Central Africa a single stable currency.
However, the final communique of Friday's summit, attended by the presidents of Guinea, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Gambia, noted that several member states had not paid their dues to WAMZ and that only two had put protocols for reducing tariff barriers within the future monetary zone onto their statute books.
The launch of the new currency is being prepared by the West African Monetary Institute based in Accra, Ghana. This is intended to be the forerunner of a common central bank.
However, several of the WAMZ's countries suffer from weak currencies and chronic budget deficits which are currently plugged by their central banks printing more and more notes of decreasing real value.
Guinea, for instance has seen the official rate of exchange of the Guinean franc slide by 25 percent against the US dollar over the past year, while its value on the parallel market has slumped by 41 percent.
President Jammeh of Gambia highlighted the paradox that the WAMZ' member states export large volumes of oil, gold, bauxite, diamonds and cocoa, but have weaker economies than their neighbours in the CFA zone, most of whom have much less in the way of natural resources.
"We are the richest in the region in terms of natural resources, yet the poorest and the most troubled," he said.
IRIN coverage on West Africa
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