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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly 268 covering 12-18 March 2005 - OCHA IRIN

Friday 25 March 2005


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IRIN-WA Weekly 268 covering 12-18 March 2005

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

CONTENTS:

COTE D’IVOIRE: Mbeki tries new tack to break deadlock as tension mounts on ground
TOGO: Opposition choose septuagenarian Bob-Akitani as candidate for April election
LIBERIA: Appeals for calm amid parliament corruption row
NIGER: Thousands on streets to protest price hikes on staple goods
COTE D’IVOIRE: Community leaders call for humanitarian help in isolated northeast
SIERRA LEONE: Female circumcision is a vote winner
CAMEROON: Arid north faces serious cereal shortage, say WFP and government

COTE D’IVOIRE: Mbeki tries new tack to break deadlock as tension mounts on ground

ABIDJAN - After four months of failed attempts to break the deadlocked peace process in Cote d’Ivoire, South African President Thabo Mbeki is hoping to host the key players in the conflict at face-to-face talks in the next few days, one of his aides said on Friday.

Mbeki was mandated by the African Union after a violent flare-up last November to seek an end to the 30-month crisis in West Africa’s once most prosperous and peaceful nation. But he has made little headway despite hopes that a high-profile leader from the continent could succeed where others and the former colonial power France had failed.

UN officials this week warned of a build-up of troops and arms on both sides of the line that partitions the world's top cocoa producer.

"We are seeing small groups of armed men moving towards the frontline," UN military spokesman Colonel Al-Khadir told IRIN. "It is mainly in the west, near the (government-controlled) towns of Guiglo and Duekoue, but also in the (rebel-held) town of Danane."

Charles Ble Goude, the leader of the pro-Gbagbo militant group, the Young Patriots said there would be weekend demonstrations in Guiglo and Duekoue on Saturday, and more to follow in other western towns on Sunday.

"There will be marches to demand the departure of (the French army)," Ble Goude was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency.

As tension builds on the frontline, where 10,000 UN and French peacekeepers are monitoring an increasingly volatile buffer zone between the rebel-held north and government-run south, pressure has piled up on the South African president for a quick fix.

Taking a fresh tack, Mbeki this week invited the five main political figures in the Ivorian dispute to come together in South Africa “hopefully in the next few days to see what can be done,” the president’s spokesman Bheki Khumalo told IRIN on Friday.

An invitation dated March 12 was addressed to President Laurent Gbagbo, the leader of the rebel New Forces Guillaume Soro and independent Prime Minister Seydou Diarra who leads the reconciliation government that has largely ground to a halt.

Full report

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TOGO: Opposition choose septuagenarian Bob-Akitani as candidate for April election

LOME - Togo's opposition parties have picked septuagenarian politician Emmanuel Bob-Akitani as their joint candidate for next month's presidential election, hoping he will be able to beat the son of the late head of state, Gnassingbe Eyadema.

"He is the sole candidate for Togo's democratic opposition to stand against the dying dictatorship," the main opposition party Union of Forces for Change (UFC) said on its website. "He represents the hope of a whole nation."

However, before the week was out, fractures began appearing in the united front of the coalition and Harry Olympio nephew of exiled Forces for Change (UFC) leader Gilchrist Olympio offered his name to the list of contenders.

In the capital Lome, Harry Olympio is leader for the moderate Rally for the Support of Democracy and Development (RSDD). He is not regarded as a political heavy weight but his announcement has lead to speculation that further candidates may come forward.

The death in February of Eyadema, a former wrestler who had ruled this tiny West African nation for 38 years, triggered a political crisis. His son Faure Gnassingbe seized power with the backing of the army within hours of his father's death and changed the constitution to make the succession legal after the event.

The six-party opposition coalition publicly anointed Bob-Akitani late Monday after weeks of discussion, time that Gnassingbe has spent zipping around the region visiting other heads of state.

Bob-Akitani, a 74-year retired mining engineer and vice-president of the UFC party, ran against Eyadema in the 2003 presidential elections and came second with 34 percent of the vote.

Full report

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LIBERIA: Appeals for calm amid parliament corruption row

MONROVIA - UN and regional leaders appealed for calm as Liberia’s transitional parliament on Thursday took a firm stand against graft by electing a new speaker following a US $92,000 corruption scandal.

Former incumbent George Dweh, a key rebel fighter in Liberia’s recently ended civil war, was suspended indefinitely on Monday along with his deputy and two other members of the house for spending government money without authorisation.

The money had been intended as resettlement allowances for members of the parliament, which was set up with representatives from Liberia's three former armed groups, political parties and civil society under a 2003 peace deal that ended 14 years of civil war.

But the corruption row whipped up fears of new unrest in the country, which is still struggling to rebuild as it prepares for elections in October.

Full report

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NIGER: Thousands on streets to protest price hikes on staple goods

NIAMEY - Thousands of people took to the streets of Niger's capital on Tuesday in protest at price hikes for staple goods like flour and milk following the introduction of a new government tax.

In its January budget, the government slapped a 19 percent Value Added Tax (VAT) on everyday items including flour, sugar and milk as well as water and electricity tariffs. Organisers said about 20,000 people took part in the march that wound its way peacefully through the capital Niamey, which lies on the banks of the Niger river.

Niger, a landlocked semi-desert nation, is ranked the second poorest country in the world, according to the UN's Human Development Index for 2004. More than 60 percent of its 11 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day.

Full report

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COTE D’IVOIRE: Community leaders call for humanitarian help in isolated northeast

BOUNA - Community leaders in rebel-held Bouna in Cote d'Ivoire's remote north east say the international humanitarian community must urgently station itself in town to stop what few handouts the population gets being siphoned off by rebel fighters.

"They need to base someone here, like in the other rebel held cities of Bouake or Korhogo. There is no representative for any one here," said one community leader.

"We are tired of this, and the people are suffering," he said in shady gardens where community leaders meet to discuss local problems.

Across the rebel-held north of Cote d'Ivoire, all government run services - including schools and hospitals - have ground to a halt since the failed September 2002 insurgency, which split the country in two.

But residents in Bouna say life is particularly tough for them because there are no international aid agencies stationed in the town to see that medicines and supplies that have been donated actually reach the people for whom they were intended.

Full report

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SIERRA LEONE: Female circumcision is a vote winner

FREETOWN - When the president's wife sponsors the circumcision of 1,500 young girls to win votes for her husband, you know you've got a problem persuading ordinary people and the government that female genital mutilation (FGM) is a bad idea.

And when the woman who is now Minister of Social Welfare, Gender and Women's Affairs, threatens to "sew up the mouths" of those who preach against FGM, you realise that you are facing a really big uphill struggle.

But that has not dissuaded Olayinka Koso-Thomas, a gynaecologist in Sierra Leone, from campaigning against the practice for 30 years, ignoring death threats and angry protestors storming her clinic.

A crudely performed operation to remove the clitoris from adolescent girls forms a key part of the initiation ceremonies held by powerful, women-only secret societies that prepare young girls for adult life, marriage and motherhood in the West African country.

Koso-Thomas, who came to Sierra Leone from Nigeria, sees nothing wrong with such 'bundu' societies and their initiation ceremonies but, on medical grounds, she and a handful of other women's rights campaigners want the circumcision ritual replaced by something less brutal and hazardous.

Full report

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CAMEROON: Arid north faces serious cereal shortage, say WFP and government

YAOUNDE - Northern Cameroon is facing a serious cereal shortage because of a poor rainy season, government officials and the World Food Programme have said.

Spokesman Wagdi Othman said the Far North province, home to three million people and sandwiched between Nigeria and Chad, had recorded a 115,000 tons crop deficit in the last agricultural campaign and the situation was worse in the Logone-Chari district where food prices have soared by as much as 50 percent lately.

Full report

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[ENDS]

Other recent WEST AFRICA reports:

IRIN-WA Weekly 269 covering 19-25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

IRIN-WA Weekly 267 covering 5 - 11 March 2005, 11/Mar/05

IRIN-WA Weekly 266 covering 26 February - 4 March 2005, 7/Mar/05

IRIN-WA Weekly 265 covering 19 – 25 February 2005, 25/Feb/05

Obasanjo and Kerekou launch final onslaught against polio, 22/Feb/05

Other recent reports:

SOUTHERN AFRICA: IRIN-SA Weekly Round-up 223 for 19-25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

CENTRAL ASIA: Weekly news wrap, 25/Mar/05

KYRGYZSTAN: Looters ransack capital following protests, 25/Mar/05

WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Weekly 269 covering 19-25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

ASIA: IRIN-Asia Weekly Round-up 12 covering the period 19 - 25 March 2005, 25/Mar/05

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