{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 06 avril 2010 – Washington Post Foreign Service- April 06, 2010–The U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda, according to former recruits, their relatives and community leaders.
RWANDA
Briar Cliff to host Rwanda survivor
Tuesday, April 6, 2010/www.siouxcityjournal.com
SIOUX CITY — Briar Cliff University will host Immaculée Ilibagiza, a Rwandan genocide survivor, at 7 p.m. Thursday in the St. Francis Center on campus. The event, sponsored by Briar Cliff Student Government, is free and open to the public.
Regarded as one of world’s leading speakers on peace, faith and forgiveness, Ilibagiza has shared her universal message worldwide of her survival of genocide in Rwanda, where her family was brutally murdered
Exclusive: Britain: A ‘safe haven’ for war criminals
More than 50 people wanted for murder and torture living here free from prosecution, campaigners say
By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor/www.independent.co.uk/Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Record numbers of alleged mass murderers and torturers have found safe haven in the UK, making this country one of the war criminal capitals of the world, it is claimed today.
Among the war crimes suspects living in Britain are senior officials from the regime of Saddam Hussein, a member of the Criminal Investigations Department in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and a Congolese police chief who confessed to a crime during a media interview.
But although the Home Office has handed the names of 51 suspects to the Metropolitan Police, not a single case has been prosecuted in the UK courts. A further 500 suspects uncovered in the past five years have been refused residency or immigration and refugee status because of government concerns over their involvement in war crimes.
The new figures, obtained by the Aegis Trust, a human rights group which campaigns against genocide, after a question from the Tory MP Stephen Crabb, a member of the House of Commons International Development Committee, paints a picture of Britain fast becoming the destination of choice for war criminals on the run.
They suggest that despite laws brought in to tackle war criminals living in the UK, little has been done to bring perpetrators to justice.
Nick Donovan, head of campaigns at the Aegis Trust, last night compared the profile of war crimes prosecutions to that of white-collar crime. He said: “The time has now come to enforce the law. It’s like white-collar crime such as insider trading in shares. You need arrests to prove that the law is a credible deterrent. We urge the Home Office to resource these investigations properly and consider resurrecting the specialist war crimes unit at Scotland Yard.”
The Metropolitan Police’s specialist war crimes unit was shut in 1999 after cases were closed into the prosecution of the few surviving Nazi suspects living in the UK. But genocide and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Darfur have reignited fears that war criminals escape justice by fleeing to the UK.
Although there have been recent examples of suspected war criminals being arrested in the UK, these all relate to extradition hearings following warrants for arrests being issued by other countries and will end in prosecutions abroad.
The Government enacted new war crimes legislation nine years ago which gave the courts the power to try suspects accused of committing war crimes overseas. To date only one British soldier has been convicted under this legislation.
In 2004 only three war crimes cases were referred to Scotland Yard for further investigation by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) out of a total of 47 files. By last year the number of the suspects referred to the police had risen to 18 amid a total of 143 suspicious cases. By the end of February this year the UKBA had passed on a further eight names.
Among the most controversial cases to be considered are four Rwandans – Vincent Bajinya, Celestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza and Emmanuel Nteziryayo – arrested in 2006 at their homes across Britain on suspicion of playing key roles in the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. All four denied wrongdoing. Mr Ugirashebuja was detained after he was traced by The Independent to Walton-on-the-Naze in Essex, where had been living since 2000 and finding employment as a care worker.
A decision by the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, to allow them to be extradited was thrown out by the High Court in April last year after judges ruled there was “a real risk they would suffer a flagrant denial of justice” if returned to Rwanda. That ruling sparked calls for urgent reform after critics said it confirmed Britain’s status as a “safe haven” from justice because suspects could neither be sent home to face trial nor face prosecution in the UK for any offence pre-dating 2001. Today the 2001 bar to prosecutions will be lifted allowing suspects to be brought to trial for alleged war crimes dating back to 1991.
Mr Donovan said: “These laws must be enforced. If not, Britain will remain a safe haven. In the 1980s and 1990s big efforts were make by the US, Canada, the UK and France and we have slowly realised that there are suspects living here from Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Somalia and Afghanistan. But it has taken those Western countries a long time to wake up these issues.”
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: “The Metropolitan Police Service has a group of officers who are the first point of contact for allegations of war crimes received. Information is dealt with appropriately on a case by case basis when accessing allegations of offences to secure corroboration evidence available in this country to meet the threshold for a charge to be brought.”
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said last night: “The changes to the law will allow offences committed since 1991 to be considered by the CPS after the police have investigated the suspected crime and passed a file of evidence to us. We have agreed a protocol with the Metropolitan Police on how to deal with cases of suspected war crimes.”
Living in the UK: Wanted abroad
Celestin Ugirashebuja
Care worker, 56, from Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. Faces accusations of having been a bourgmestre, or local mayor, in the rural commune of Kigoma. In 1994, he allegedly chaired meetings in which he exhorted the killing of Tutsis. At one village he is accused of using his authority to persuade Tutsi residents to return home, after which they were all slaughtered. He denies any wrongdoing.
Emmanuel Nteziryayo
Jobless father of five children, who lives in Manchester. Now 51, he is accused of handing out weapons and overseeing roadblocks in Mudasomwa commune, where he was mayor. Prosecution files claim he once drove Tutsis to a police station to be killed. He claimed asylum when he arrived in Britain and was granted leave to remain. He denies any wrongdoing.
Vincent Bajinya
At 48, Bajinya is the most senior of the alleged Rwandan “genocidaires” and is rated as a “category one” offender by the Kigali authorities. A medical doctor, he came to Britain and began working for a charity in London helping victims of torture. After he gained British citizenship, Bajinya changed his name to Vincent Brown. He denies any wrongdoing.
Charles Munyaneza
A 51-year-old cleaner from Bedford accused of organising the training of Interahamwe militias in his commune in southern Rwanda. He denies any wrongdoing.
Mile Bosnic
Wanted for trial in Croatia for the mass murder, torture and imprisonment of Croats during the Balkan conflict when he was a Serb Democratic Party leader. Now 54, he was arrested last month at his house in Gloucester following a request from Croatia for his extradition.
Ejup Ganic
The former Bosnian vice-pres
ident, 64, accused of having a role in the 1992 death of Yugoslav army troops in Bosnia, was arrested last month at Heathrow on a Serbian war crimes warrant. Ganic is a US-educated engineering professor who had been in the UK for several days attending events at Buckingham University, partnered with the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. He denies the charges.
UGANDA
In Uganda, bill challenges press freedom
ethiopianreview.com/.By Peter G. Mwesige/www.ethiopianreview.com/ April 6th, 2010
On March 24, I received an e-mail from a close friend under the intriguing subject “What…?” On opening the e-mail, I discovered my friend was not impressed by two articles in that morning’s newspapers condemning the government’s recent proposal to amend the press law and introduce new restrictions on the publication of newspapers.
“What is all the drama journalists are acting out in the papers about the proposed amendments to Wawawa Bill?” my friend wrote in the email. Wawawa is slang for journalists at my social club.
He went on to ask me what was wrong with an amendment that would involve:
1.) Annual licensing
2.) Restrictions on foreign ownership
3.) Strengthening of disciplinary procedures
4.) Empowering the Media Council power to close media houses.
“By the way, these things are par for the course in the business world,” he added in the e-mail. I was busy that morning, so I wrote but a quick note to my friend: “I guess the premise is that ‘the media are not like any other business.”
I have no problems with some restrictions on foreign ownership. Similarly, licensing would not be terrible as long as it is not used unduly to restrict freedom of expression. Uganda is a signatory to several regional and international declarations and protocols that are very clear on how licensing and regulation of the media should proceed. The regulator, for one, should be independent.
Below are some specific comments on what I consider problematic provisions. Fortunately, I am told the Minister of Information said at a recent media conference that these were still proposals that could be subject to change.
The proposed requirement that newspapers obtain annual licenses, which can be revoked by the Media Council (read the government), is very dangerous, especially when looked at in the context of other provisions that create and criminalize publication offenses. The Media Council could easily revoke or refuse to renew the license of a newspaper accused of committing the new publication offenses the bill creates. And this could be done even before a competent court pronounces itself on whether the newspaper in fact committed those offences. This is what happened to the Central Broadcasting Service, or CBS. The Broadcasting Council (the government, really) accused, prosecuted, and found the station guilty.
What makes this bill even more dangerous is a proposal to have information the minister effectively appointing the chairman of the Media Council. If adopted, this would further erode the independence of the regulator. Currently, the members of the Media Council elect a chairperson from among themselves. But even then, the way the council is constituted makes it easy for the minister to interfere with its independence. The proposed amendment does not address this. Instead, it worsens what is already a bad situation. It is wrong to grant such powers (to revoke the license of a newspaper) to a regulatory body whose independence cannot be guaranteed.
Also, some of the proposed licensing conditions ( “proof of existence of adequate technical facilities,” for example) are concerning. It appears that the government is worried that under the current law anybody can easily start a newspaper. But this is the very essence of freedom—to impart information. Obviously this has implications on the quality of journalism. But it is necessary in the interest of media pluralism and diversity. The enjoyment of free expression, in this case the freedom to impart and disseminate information, can’t be the preserve of only those who have “access to modern technical facilities” or those with the “right social, cultural, and economic values.” And who determines these values, anyway?
The proposed prohibition of the publication of “information injurious to national security, stability, and unity, to Uganda’s relationship with neighbors, and to the economy,” as well as the proposal to criminalize such publications is very dangerous as such provisions would be subject to subjective interpretation. What constitutes injury to national security? Who defines injury to national security? And who defines “economic sabotage?”
The notion of irresponsible journalism, which the government says it is trying to address, is quite loaded. The government often invokes it to refer to journalism that makes those in power uncomfortable either because it is too critical or because it challenges their authority. But we can agree on what constitutes irresponsible journalism. Inciting people to ethnic hatred and genocide, for instance, does not have constitutional protection in many jurisdictions. But the problem in Uganda and many parts of Africa is that the government wants to proscribe legitimate expression under the guise of protecting the public interest, when in fact it is protecting its own interests.
Press freedom and free expression facilitate the enjoyment of other rights enshrined in the constitution. This is not simply about media organizations and journalists. It is about every citizen. The Constitution gives all of us the right to freedom of speech and expression. The Constitution is also clear that limitations to these freedoms must be acceptable and demonstrably justifiable in a free and democratic society. The limitations to freedom of expression that the government is proposing are neither acceptable not justifiable in a free and democratic society.
(Source: CPJ)
Uganda Wildlife Body Urged to Integrate Local Communities in Tourism
April 06, 2010/www.sbwire.com
Tip on Achieving Sustainable Travel tourism in Uganda
Kampala, Uganda — (SBWIRE) — 04/05/2010 — The Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), a wildlife conservation body has been challenged to integrate local people in the tourism industry if the country is to achieve sustainable tourism.
There is dire need to involve local communities especially those in the park vicinities in tourism development plans. Not involving local people undermines the country of tourism success. These remarks were raised by tourism stakeholders at a recent Kampala workshop.
“With knowledge that tourism has the potential to contribute significantly to Uganda’s economy, emphasis should not only be put to the development of infrastructure and tourism facilities.” Geoffrey Baluku, a tourism consultant noted.
Baluku indicated that for tourism to be developed in a sustainable manner, efforts should be made to ensure enjoyment for the tourist and minimum impact or disruption for the local communities and environment. Benefits should be vivid among within the locals if we are to sustain tourism.
“Unless local people begin feeling tourism in their pockets and in their living standards, those Strategic Long-and-short-term tourism plans designed stand to be fruitless if they do not incorporate the local person.” Baluku emphasized.
He urged UWA to ensure that tourism revenue stays in the host communities to enhance their livelihoods and generate a profitable source of income.
Conclusively Baluku advised that a symbolic relationship must be built with the locals staying close to the Wildlife conservation areas if UWA does not want the industry to be frustrated the low levels and there is need to emphasize the use of work with new technology, natural resource management and marketing concepts for the travel tourism industry in Uganda to prosper.
TANZANIA:
Tanzania government angry over CITES failure
By Wolfgang H. Thome, eTN | /www.eturbonews.com/Apr 06, 2010
The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism in Dar es Salaam has last week reacted angrily over the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) rejection of their application to sell “legal” ivory stocks and launched a scathing attack on the secretariat and Kenya neighbors, whom he accused of having spearheaded a campaign of negative propaganda. He also accused the secretariat of CITES in Lusaka of “misinformation” before adamantly adding, “We were right,” and then accusing Kenya of misleading the rest of the world when he said: ‘…but what happened is that Kenya spearheaded a negative campaign, and all other nations relied on wrong information from Kenya, and that is why the conclusions were not in our favor,” clearly being in denial over the obvious facts presented by the secretariat to the plenary session and failing to see that the proposal was bad in the first place.
Even his minister recently let the proverbial cat out of the bag when saying that “only part of the proceeds” would go to conservation, giving opponents of the application ample time to publicize this lapse of judgement, even if made in an impromptu speech, as one source in Tanzania pointed out to this correspondent.
The hardline position of “all or nothing” taken by Tanzania in the run up to the global CITES meeting left them little room to maneuver and clearly made it impossible for them to accept a compromise, especially after snubbing their Kenyan counterparts who had attempted to seek a solution under East African Community (EAC) auspices.
A source in Dar es Salaam already promised that Tanzania would file a fresh application to sell their ivory stocks very soon, but had to concede to a follow-up question that it was only Japan and China wanting to buy the ivory, two nations notorious for their greed and hunger for the “white gold” at the expense of the elephant population in Africa. Having failed, however, again in the closing plenary session in Doha, to which the Tanzanian delegation referred the earlier refusal for re-consideration and was once more turned down, this does not speak well of the capacity of the delegation to absorb and learn from these developments and will leave them upon their return home to lick their wounds and having to seek a new strategy to come out of the self-created isolation in which Tanzania now finds herself vis-a-vis the members of the elephant coalition countries.
Meanwhile, conservationists and NGOs linked to conservation have expressed their relief over the secretariat’s recommendation to the plenary session to reject the application, and in private, several of them softened their stand on the secretariat staff over previous allegations made of “bias,” confirming to this correspondent that the staff there had conducted themselves beyond reproach and gave a fair and balanced report to the member state delegations.
There was no immediate official comment available from Kenya over the allegations made by their Tanzanian counterparts, although one source in Nairobi, insisting on not being named said: “This will go to the EAC for talks there. It is a matter of concern to other EAC members, and it is best not to respond to this kind of talk in kind in public but discuss it at the right forum. There are also other issues which need sorting out, and we will pursue solutions through direct talks, not the media.”
CONGO RDC :
Vodacom faces DRC dissolution
Partner presses to wind up joint venture
April 6, 2010/By Thomas Hubert/www.busrep.co.za
The future of Vodacom’s joint venture in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) will be on the line tomorrow as a meeting of Vodacom Congo shareholders could decide whether a bitter quarrel can be patched up or whether the company should be sold or dissolved.
Vodacom Congo’s losses have mounted and a conflict between Vodacom South Africa and its minority partner, Congolese Wireless Network (CWN), has deepened in recent months.
CWN, which holds 49 percent of Vodacom Congo, appears ready to rubber stamp a divorce from Vodacom SA.
CWN recently approached the South African group to buy back its 51 percent share in the company.
“We have other partners with whom we could work,” said CWN’s chairman, Alieu Conteh. His company secured a licence and started a network in the DRC before entering a joint venture agreement with Vodacom in 2001.
Vodacom rejected CWN’s buyout offer immediately.
“They have not put a price on the table,” said Vodacom chief corporate officer Bob Collymore. “Even if they did, it would be unlikely that we would sell. We want to stay in the DRC.”
He added that Vodacom was still interested in the partnership, but was also “looking at any solution that would make the company work”.
Neither company is willing to give up its stake in the leading telephone company in the DRC – a country where cellphone penetration was only 16 percent last year.
Vodacom, through its Mauritius-based holding company, Vodacom International, has been the sole source of funding for Vodacom Congo since 2002 – under terms which CWN says constitute “usury, breach of trust, fraud and forgery”.
CWN filed a criminal lawsuit against Vodacom International before the general prosecutor’s office in Kinshasa last December and said it would only withdraw its complaint if Vodacom paid back $166 million (R1.2 billion) in interest and fees charged to its Congolese subsidiary.
CWN also wants to renegotiate the joint venture agreement. CWN argues that $168m in cash advances and a $’m loan from Vodacom International to Vodacom Congo have generated interest and fees at around double the rate of those on international markets.
The minority shareholder also accuses its partner of failing to plan for the repayment of the capital loaned, thereby extracting perpetual interest and putting Vodacom Congo in a state of “total dependency”.
In addition, Congolese tax authorities regarded interest paid to a parent company as taxable dividends and had imposed repeated penalties on Vodacom Congo over the arrangement, CWN sources said.
Vodacom confirmed the figures but denied any fraud in the administration of the loans. “Having explicitly approved the terms of the funding, CWN cannot now claim ignorance of these terms and we refute any suggestion that Vodacom has unduly benefited from the finance agreements,” Collymore said.
Having heard representatives from both shareholders, the prosecutor’s office in Kinshasa has decided not to refer the case to a court for the moment and to give the negotiations a chance.
“If this is solved through the judiciary, it could lead to the liquidation of the company,” said a source close to the court investigation.
Accumulated losses at Vodacom Congo now amount to $230m, according to CWN.
Vodacom Congo was also touched by the alleged nepotism scandal involving relatives of Vodacom’s former chief executive, Alan Knott-Craig.
Afrikings, the marketing consultancy owned by Knott-Craig’s niece and nephew, had offices and staff at Vodacom Congo’s headquarters, CWN sources said. When Afrikings left the country, it left Vodacom Congo to foot its tax bill.
“That company was indeed contracted to Vodacom Congo,” Collymore said. “This contract ended over one year ago. The tax authorities have been investigating irregularities that have more to do with Afrikings than with Vodacom Congo.”
CWN now estimates that “the intrinsic value of the subsidiary is zero” and is considering using its power to wind up the company – a statutory right of a minority shareholder if losses rise above 75 percent of the company’s capital.
Asked what would happen if both parties did not find an agreement at the upcoming shareholders’ meeting, Conteh said: “Either we dissolve the company, or we sell it.” – Independent Foreign Service
KENYA :
Somali refugees recruited to fight Islamist militia
By Sudarsan Raghavan/Washington Post Foreign Service /Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The U.S.-backed government of Somalia and its Kenyan allies have recruited hundreds of Somali refugees, including children, to fight in a war against al-Shabab, an Islamist militia linked to al-Qaeda, according to former recruits, their relatives and community leaders.
Many of the recruits were taken from the sprawling Dadaab refugee camps in northeastern Kenya, which borders Somalia. Somali government recruiters and Kenyan soldiers came to the camps late last year, promising refugees as much as $600 a month to join a force advertised as supported by the United Nations or the United States, the former recruits and their families said.
“They have stolen my son from me,” said Noor Muhamed, 70, a paraplegic refugee whose son Abdi was recruited.
Across this region, children and young men are vanishing. All sides in Somalia’s conflict are recruiting refugees to fight in a remote battleground in the global war on terrorism from which they fled, community leaders say.
It is unclear whether recruiting by the governments of Kenya and Somalia is ongoing. But their military officers continue to train refugees at a heavily guarded base near the northern Kenyan town of Isiolo as the Somali government prepares for a long-planned offensive against the Shabab.
A second camp is in Manyani, a training station for the Kenya Wildlife Service in southern Kenya, according to former recruits, relatives, community leaders and U.N. investigators.
“They told us we were going to Somalia soon,” said Hassan Farah, 23, who escaped from the Isiolo camp last month.
Farah, who was injured in a 2008 bombing in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, first spent more than two months at Manyani. “I saw 12-year-old children at the camp,” said Farah, who has a jagged scar on his left arm. He escaped by bribing a water truck driver to sneak him out.
The Kenyan government has acknowledged that it is helping train police officers for Somalia’s weak interim government but said that the recruits were flown in from Mogadishu. “No one is recruited from the refugee camps,” said Alfred Mutua, a Kenyan government spokesman.
But a recent U.N. report on Somalia confirmed the recruitment of refugees, including underage youths, for military training. Kenya’s training program, the report said, is a violation of a U.N. arms embargo, which requires nations to get permission from the U.N. Security Council before assisting Somalia’s security efforts.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special representative to Somalia, said he has not personally seen evidence to act on. “If this recruiting is happening, we have to condemn it,” he said.
Recruiting refugees is a violation of international law, and enlisting children under 15 constitutes war crimes, human rights groups say.
“They told me I would become a soldier and fight the Shabab,” said Ahmed Barre, a bone-thin 15-year-old whose family fled Somalia’s anarchy in 1991, when the central government collapsed. He was born in Dadaab’s camps and has never been to Somalia. “I didn’t want to go. But I was jobless. I wanted to help my family.”
A State Department spokesman, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said, “We strongly condemn recruitment in the refugee camps by any party.” Senior U.S. officials, he added, “have stressed” to top Kenyan and Somali government officials “the need to prevent any recruitment in refugee camps.”
Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns about the force, which numbers roughly 2,500.
Once the recruits signed up, their cellphones and identification cards were taken. They never saw the promised money. And they were denied access to their traumatized families, which, fearing deportation, seldom complained to the authorities, local officials and recruits said.
“These people ran away for their dear lives to seek refuge in Kenya,” said Mohamed Gabow Kharbat, mayor of Garissa, the provincial capital. “To recruit them and send them back to the same situation they ran away from, this is terrible.”
Kharbat said that “most of the youths have no parents, no family members to protest on their behalf. And even if they have parents, these are people who are scared of the government security organs. They can never have the confidence to complain.”
The recruitment comes amid fears that Somalia’s Islamist militants could extend their reach into Kenya, Uganda and other neighboring countries. The Shabab has voiced support for al-Qaeda and has attracted jihadists from around the world. The United States and European nations are supporting the pro-Western Somalia transitional government with arms, cash, training and intelligence.
Somali refugees have few opportunities in Kenya, which has imposed strict residency rules and limits on travel, making it difficult for them to find jobs. Many youths are uneducated.
“The Shabab and all other groups have representation here,” said Abdul Khader, 35, a refugee youth leader. “They give a lot of false hopes to the refugees.”
Hassan Mukhtar, 16, was recruited to fight for the Somali government with a promise of $300 a month and a $50 signing bonus.
When he and other recruits did not get their signing bonus, they jumped out of the truck on the way to Manyani.
A Shabab recruiter enticed Mukhtar Awliyahan, 16, by promising him $300 month. He was taken to Somalia and given the nom de guerre “Mukhtarullah” — the One Chosen by God. In January, tired of fighting, he escaped. Today he keeps a low profile in the camp. “They are still recruiting,” he said.
Hezbi Islam, a rival militia, recruited Bare Ali Jama, 19. “I had nothing to substitute for this offer,” said Jama, who joined along with five other refugees. In February, Shabab fighters pushed them out of their stronghold; he fled back to Kenya. Still jobless, he wants to return to Somalia. “I will fight for anybody,” he said.
Dutch Marines Free German Vessel From Somali Pirates
www.allheadlinenews.com/April 6, 2010
Hussein Moulid – AHN News Africa Correspondent
Nairobi, Kenya (AHN) – Dutch marine’s freed a German container ship that was attacked by Somali pirates on Monday.
The MS Taipan was en route from Kenyan port of Nairobi to Djibouti when it was attacked around 500 nautical miles east of the Somalia coast, a spokesman for the European Union’s anti-piracy mission Atlanta said.
The Dutch frigate Tromp Lynx assisted the MS Taipan when the pirates attacked the merchant vessel. Marines boarded the German vessel, switched off the engines and alerted the warship that patrolling the Gulf of Aden.
Ten pirates were arrested and the 13 crew members (2 German, 3 Russian and 8 Sri Lankan nationals) of the MS Taipan are reported to be in good condition.
The crew of the Tromp had initially tried to negotiate with the pirates, but when the pirates refuse to accept and they decided to free the ship by force, the spokesman added.
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
The Threat of Extremism in South Africa
theurbancoaster.com/By Michael Madill/Tuesday, 06 April 2010
There is a good side to the machete and bludgeoning death of Eugene Terreblanche in South Africa on April 3, but it’s not what you think. You don’t have to listen very close to hear the cries of ‘good riddance,’ and indeed Mr Terreblanche and the white supremacy and separatism he preached won’t be missed, but the passing of an exponent of a vile racist nationalism isn’t the most important thing to issue from his murder.
South Africa may now finally be able to confront the fear that lurks in the public imagination there but which is rarely addressed in a rational way – the fear that white retribution for the end of apartheid will cause a civil war.
In a sense, the threats of a white backlash were always like the shouts of a petulant teenager. The government is big enough and the army and police loyal enough to the government that it can meet any internal threat easily. But that didn’t stop people like Terreblanche from trying.
The reason he got nowhere in the end was that he was always looking for the one big shot to tip the country into anarchy. It never happened. He deployed the rhetoric of violence so often that most people tuned him out. His actual violence was so parochial and small-scale that its effects were sharply limited.
Ordinary people grew tired. They got on with lives and left bigots like Terreblanche to stew in their own hate. His AWB – Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging or Afrikaner Resistance Movement – proved unable to ignite the civil war or establish the Boerestaat – a whites only Boer Republic – that he promised on the handover of power from apartheid to democratic regime in 1994.
By the time of his death Terreblanche was little more than a crackpot cult leader: a big-mouthed guaranteed news-maker and a father figure to a few thousand armed or wealthy (or both) believers in a Fascist utopia on the plains of the Orange Free State.
In spite of his bluster he made South Africans of all sorts nervous. He made most whites nervous because unlike him they wanted to be part of something bigger, richer and better than apartheid and they feared being tarred with his brush as Terreblanche tarred and feathered white university professor Floors van Jaarsfeld in 1979.
He made them nervous because he led an attack on police in his hometown in 1991 when then President FW DeKlerk spoke about the need for political reform, an event which killed four people and entered the history books as The Battle of Ventersdorp.
He made black people nervous because it was never clear precisely who and how many of the country’s five million whites really shared his dream. He made governments before and after the end of apartheid nervous because he represented a challenge to the power of the state and a spark to civil war.
The government, at least, had to take him seriously because he periodically led his supporters on armed photo-ops like the ‘invasion’ of the negotiations to establish majority rule at Kempton Park in 1993. He also beat up a black gas station attendant in 1996 and spent time in prison, where he was one of only three white faces and where he claims to have found Christianity again and softened his anti-black views. Indeed.
The long nightmare of interracial bitterness might end there, with the burial of Eugene Terreblanche, were it not for an equally loud-mouthed and equally divisive black man of importance. Julius Malema is the leader of the Youth League of the African National Congress, the political party which holds the Presidency and about two thirds of the seats in South Africa’s parliament.
The twenty-nine-year old firebrand is notorious for his commitment to the ANC – he was working for them at age thirteen, destroying ex-apartheid National Party posters in the run-up to the 1994 elections – and for his willingness to say almost anything in order to get media attention.
His latest gambit, which has earned him plenty of media exposure, a rebuke in court and police interest but so far no direct action from his employers at the ANC, is to revive the singing of the party fighting song Dubul’ ibhunu from the days of the (often violent) struggle against apartheid. Translated to English, it goes something like this: “Kill the Boer / Shoot him / Shoot him / Shoot him / Shoot him with a gun.” Boer is a word for a white Afrikaner farmer and a slang term comparable to ‘whitey’ in the US.
Not everything Mr Malema says or does is so virulent, and his criticism of the balance of economic power in South Africa is often pointed. Still, he seems determined to paint himself as the favorite of violent anti-white South Africans, as when he shook hands with the loathsome Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe this month and pronounced his (Mugabe’s) stealing of white farmland there a success before claiming that South African farmers were next.
He also advocates nationalizing South Africa’s gold and diamond mines, on the grounds that they concentrate wealth too narrowly in white and foreign (he says ‘imperialist’) hands. He is blamed for indirectly causing the murder of Eugene Terreblanche by reviving Dubul’ ibhunu, though there is no evidence that he solicited the murder. You would be hard pressed to find a better wedge with which to separate white and black now that Terreblanche is dead.
The novelty of majority rule in South Africa – it is not yet twenty years since the first election in which black politicians stood for the Presidency – makes it harder to brush aside extremists of left and right like Mr Malema and Mr Terreblanche than it is elsewhere. It’s not that current officeholders are susceptible to extremist ideas – they are or aren’t in the same way as politicians in all countries. It’s not that black politicians have to develop the expertise or habits of governance – that’s an absurd Orientalist claim used to justify colonial repression everywhere.
Rather, new democracies are fragile because they’re new democracies. The power of democratic institutions depends critically on the willingness of people to live under them. When we talk of stable governments, really we mean those which rule by force of habit backed by guns and money. If people don’t believe your government will be around for very long, they are more inclined to secede from its influence or try their luck at a coup d’etat, but if most people in a country have faith in the system, it will ride out the shocks.
The real danger of extremists like Mr Terreblanche and Mr Malema isn’t that they will personally upend the status quo, but that they will erode faith in the system to unsupportable levels before workable alternatives emerge. The country could slip into general violence without a spark if the present constitutional order was widely accepted as insufficient.
Today, South Africa is prosperous and stable. The institutions of government show no sign of cracking despite efforts from the right and the left to undermine the authority of the state. But the longer it takes to put existential fears arising from race tension behind them, the longer South Africans will have cause to worry – just a little bit – about that part of their future.
BHP, Metropolitan, Vodacom: South African Equity Market Preview
April 06, 2010/By Janice Kew and Ron Derby/Bloomberg
April 6 (Bloomberg) — The following is a list of companies whose shares may have unusual price changes in South Africa. Stock symbols are in parentheses after company names and prices are from the last close. The local stock market was closed April 2 and April 5 for the Easter holiday.
South Africa’s FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index rose for a sixth day, adding 272.46, or 1 percent, to 29,020.02 at the close in Johannesburg.
Bell Equipment Ltd. (BEL SJ): South Africa’s biggest maker of dump trucks and forklifts will begin trading without the right to its latest dividend. Bell rose 5 cents, or 0.4 percent, to 11.70 rand.
BHP Billiton Ltd. (BIL SJ): Australia’s competition regulator extended its review of Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton’s iron ore joint venture as it examines whether it will influence the supply of the steelmaking raw material. In South Africa BHP said it will review a power supply contract with Eskom Holdings Ltd. to its Southern African aluminum smelters BHP, the world’s largest mining company, climbed 3.65 rand, or 1.5 percent, to 255.65 rand.
Gold One International Ltd. (GDO SJ): The company said a strike at its South African mine may continue for “some time” because of the difference between its wage offer and the demands of workers. Gold One declined 2 cents, or 1 percent, to 1.93 rand.
Insimbi Refractory & Alloy Supplies Ltd. (ISB SJ): The South African foundry-supplies company expects full-year earnings to slump 80 percent. The company dropped 2 cents, o 4.4 percent, to 43 cents.
Metropolitan Holdings Ltd. (MET SJ): The South African insurer was placed on Rating Watch Positive by Fitch Ratings. Metropolitan fell 1.17 rand, or 6.9 percent, to 15.71 rand.
Vodacom Group Ltd. (VOD SJ): Vodafone Group Plc’s Congolese unit is seeking a $484 million capital injection through a share sale, a move that the minority partner, Congo Wireless Networks, or CWN, says would dilute its stake. Vodafone-controlled Vodacom Group rose 93 cents, or 1.7 percent, to 56.53 rand.
Shares or American depositary receipts of the following South African companies closed as follows:
Anglo American Plc (AAUKY US) rose 0.7 percent to $22.70. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU US) increased 1.7 percent to $40.32. BHP Billiton Ltd. (BBL US) advanced 0.3 percent to $70.90. DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY US) increased 2.2 percent to $5.06. Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI US) climbed 1.3 percent to $12.99. Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY US) rose 2.1 percent to $10.14. Impala Platinum Holdings (IMPUY US) climbed 1.1 percent to $29.77. Sappi Ltd. (SPP US) gained 2 percent to $4.52. Sasol Ltd. (SSL US) rose 0.9 percent to $42.82.
–Editor: Antony Sguazzin
Zimbabwe Visit by ANC Firebrand Malema Ends Amid Racial Crisis in South Africa
African National Congress firebrand Julius Malema kept a a low profile as he left Zimbabwe late Monday after a three-day visit, canceling a scheduled news conference blaming trip organizers for confusion about flights
Scott Bobb, Patience Rusere and Thomas Chiripasi/www1.voanews.com/06 April 2010
| Washington
South African President Jacob Zuma and other officials continued Monday to try to defuse racial tensions after the murder on Saturday of white supremacist Eugene Terre’blanche, who was killed by two black workers in what reports said was a dispute over pay.
VOA correspondent Scott Bobb in Johannesburg reported on the crisis in South Africa which threatened to overshadow preparations for the World Cup of soccer to kick off there in June.
African National Congress firebrand Julius Malema kept a a low profile as he left Zimbabwe late Monday, canceling a scheduled news conference blaming trip organizers for confusion about flights for his delegation though he spoke briefly with reporters following a meeting with President Robert Mugabe.
VOA Studio 7 correspondent Thomas Chiripasi reported that Malema rejected the notion that his anti-white declarations had anything to do with the murder of Terre’Blanche. South African opposition parties said Malema’s references to the liberation song “Shoot the Boer” qualified as hate speech and had helped stoke interracial tensions.
Malema’s three-day visit to Zimbabwe stirred strong feelings on both sides of the border. The Zimbabwe National Students Union and members of other youth organizations said he had no place advocating policies for Zimbabwe given allegations of corruption at home and his excesses of speech along racial lines.
Malema’s statements while in Zimbabwe sparked fear in South Africa that it could follow Zimbabwe down the pathway of chaotic land reform through the seizure of white property. South Africa’s Sunday Times ran the headline “Malema gets cosy with ZANU-Pf sharks” a reference to Mr. Mugabe’s former ruling party.
South African-based Zimbabewan political analyst Ozias Tungwarara told VOA Studio 7 reporter Patience Rusere that Malema’s statements don’t necessarily reflect official ANC policy as the youth wing of the ruling party has some independence.
South African Coal Plant Proposal Strains ‘Culture’ of World Bank
www.nytimes.com/By LISA FRIEDMAN of ClimateWire/Published: April 6, 2010
“No” isn’t a word the World Bank hears often from the United States.
In the past five years, the United States has opposed less than 3 percent of more than 3,400 World Bank Group loans and grants, a ClimateWire analysis has found.
Despite the country’s being the largest shareholder, American opposition failed to stop any of the $183 billion worth of roads, dams, hospitals, irrigation systems or other projects that came before the bank’s executive directors for approval. Nevertheless, America exerts a powerful influence on the bank, and its opposition is often enough to steer major policy shifts behind the scenes.
That clout is about to be tested. On Wednesday, the World Bank board is expected to vote on a $3.75 billion loan to help South Africa build a 4,800-megawatt coal-fired power plant. The plant will release an estimated 25 million metric tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere. Its loan application has sparked some of the fiercest public outcry the World Bank has seen in years.
Opponents are leaning hard on the United States to cast one of its rare but potent “no” votes, shining a spotlight on the secretive World Bank decisionmaking process, in which critical choices are made behind closed doors and, analysts say, diplomatic sensitivities mingle with an institutional drive to approve loans. Actual “yea and nay” votes, in fact, are almost unheard of at the World Bank, where the money flow is virtually always given the green light by a well-orchestrated consensus.
“It’s a culture of loan approval,” said Bruce Rich, an international environmental lawyer and longtime World Bank critic. “The board members tend to almost rubber-stamp these projects. They almost never say no.”
By most accounts, the 24-member board won’t say no to South Africa’s state-owned Eskom Holdings Ltd. this week, either. Analysts and congressional aides said they expect the U.S. director to abstain, an objection that would still allow the project to move ahead.
The South African government has lobbied fiercely for the loan. In a Washington Post op-ed last month, South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan argued that the country’s economic health depends on it.
‘Stunting’ future growth prospects
“To sustain the growth rates we need to create jobs, we have no choice but to build new generating capacity — relying on what, for now, remains our most abundant and affordable energy source: coal,” Gordhan wrote. He said South Africa is working to address climate chnage and would prefer to build capacity with clean technologies. But, he said, options like wind and solar are not yet affordable enough, nor can they provide energy at the needed scale.
“A question that has to be faced is whether stunting growth prospects in our region will in any way serve the goal we all share of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions over the long term,” Gordhan wrote.
Environmental groups also mounted a thundering campaign. South African opponents of the coal plant traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with congressional leaders and World Bank executive directors. From the Netherlands to France, activists wrote letters urging directors to stand against the plant, on the grounds that limited public funding for energy should not go to fossil fuels.
European leaders are under the gun — pressed on the one hand to act as leaders in fighting climate change, yet worried on the other about appearing to block economic development in Africa. In Norway, for example, the Ministry of the Environment is urging its government to reject the loan, while the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Agency for Development Cooperation want to support it.
But no country is facing more pressure than the United States.
Last year, the Obama administration issued internal guidelines to discourage U.S. executive directors from approving coal power plants at any of the World Bank Group institutions. Green groups are pressuring the administration to make good on that promise and vote “no.” But doing so, analysts said, could rupture relations between America and South Africa.
Diplomatic concerns are a major reason why countries almost never reject projects once they come for a vote, current and former World Bank officials said.
The ‘optics’ filter through a lens of consensus
“The optics of this are complicated,” said Manish Bapna, executive vice president of the World Resources Institute and a former World Bank economist and team leader.
“The highly visible international arena in which these decisions are taken make it difficult for significant disagreements or dissension to manifest itself,” he said. “When it does, it’s a significant statement.”
An analysis of five years’ worth of positions on World Bank projects, data made public monthly by the U.S. Treasury Department, indicates that a “no” vote on the Eskom project would be highly unusual for the United States.
Of the 3,404 projects the World Bank Group approved in that period, the United States rejected only 88. Of those, 43 percent were loans to Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina, opposed on the basis of a law prohibiting America to approve loans for countries that have not taken the necessary steps to apprehend war criminals.
Enacted in 2006, that law is one of about 64 provisions (pdf) that Congress created requiring the U.S. executive director of oppose the World Bank for a variety of reasons. America’s representative at the bank also is expected to oppose loans to terrorist states and human rights violators, countries that practice female genital mutilation, and countries where budgets and audits of military expenditures are not transparent. Some laws govern or bar loans to specific countries like Cuba, Sudan, Myanmar and Iraq.
Far more common than a “no” vote, though, is an abstention. Since loans are approved by a majority of the World Bank shareholders’ votes cast, abstaining is essentially the same as not voting. In practice, it allows a country to state objections to a project without the diplomatic unpleasantness of outright opposition.
Abstention, a diplomatic ‘no’?
Congressional aides said last week that they expect the United States to abstain on the Eskom vote.
Most U.S. laws governing foreign assistance give its World Bank directors wide leeway to abstain rather than vote “no,” and they take it. America abstained 282 times since 2004 — about 8 percent of the time — on a wide variety of projects, ranging from a tiny $3.9 million credit for a biosafety plan in Burkina Faso to a $2.1 billion loan for a roads project in Kazakhstan.
U.S. Treasury officials declined to discuss World Bank voting patterns or explain any specific votes. The Treasury is required by law to post its “no” and “abstain” positions, and each month releases a list of recent board decisions. A handful of other countries, like the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Germany, issue annual reports that may contain a record of their countries’ positions, but no other nations release the same volume of data as the United States, according to the Bank Information Center watchdog group.
And the reality is that by the time the World Bank board votes on a project, the outcome has already been decided — favorably. Much like the way congressional leaders won’t bring a major bill to the House or Senate floor without knowing they’ve got the votes for passage, World Bank management also delays board decisions until a broad consensus has been reached.
David Wheeler, a former World Bank economist and now a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, said the bank’s consensus culture has its roots in history. The original mission of the World Bank, which was created during World War II in Bretton Woods, N.H., was to help rebuild Europe. Even as the mission changed toward pove
rty alleviation, the United States and Europe dominated both financing and policy.
“Although they had differences among themselves, they basically were aligned in their worldview. I think there was a general sense of commonality in policy,” Wheeler said. “Imagine the view of a country club that hasn’t let anyone new in in a long time. It’s a consensus culture.”
That’s changing, he and others said, as the geopolitics of the world — and the World Bank — shift. Major developing countries like China and India have more clout than ever before, in large part because they can easily access capital in the private markets. The World Bank, though, wants to retain those creditworthy big-borrowing countries as lenders.
“For some of the larger developing countries, the World Bank needs those countries more than those countries need the World Bank,” Bapna said. In the future, he predicted, “instead of the rich countries being able to call all the shots, increasingly, it’s going to require even more negotiation than we’ve seen in the past.”
Bucking institutional momentum is rare
Per Kurowski, a former World Bank executive director from Venezuela, said the institution has no internal mechanism for handling a loan that is rejected. So taking a loan before the board without ironing out problems is, he said, “a no-no.”
“You want to make absolutely sure you have the necessary consensus. They are risk-averse, and they don’t want embarrassment,” he said, adding, “Managements are afraid of risk and embarrassment no matter where they are.”
In some instances, a country will withdraw a project if there is strong opposition or if the outcome appears uncertain. In 2000, for example, China withdrew a $40 million loan request for a controversial project involving the resettling of nearly 58,000 mainly Chinese farmers into a traditionally Tibetan and Mongolian area of Qinghai province.
Those instances of public clashes reverberating outside of the institution are rare. According to Rich, they also are the bank’s “worst nightmare.” He argued that from the time a country approaches the World Bank for a loan or — as also often happens — a country director helps a government design a project, all the gears in the bank already are working to see the money through. Loan packages take time to prepare, and by the time a proposal gets to the board, it’s gone through months, maybe years, of intense staff and management work.
“There’s already a big institutional momentum, and by the time it gets to the board, there are huge political costs for the bank as an institution,” Rich said. “For the board to turn it down, the borrowing country is offended, it’s bad for the careers of the management and the staff, it makes everyone look bad.”
Yet opposition can also steer policy. When the Chinese Western Poverty Reduction Project fell through, it was widely understood that World Bank funds would not be used for Beijing’s projects aimed at demographic restructuring and development of Tibetan areas. And while loans to countries that the United States regards as supporting terrorism, like Iran and Syria, go through despite American objections, they also don’t come up very often. The bank has approved only three loans for Iran in the past five years, for example, and one $5 million equity investment in Syria.
Whether the United States abstains or votes “no” on Eskom, analysts watching the process say the debate is sending a strong signal that the World Bank will have to do more to encourage renewable energy and may even have to sideline loans for future coal plants.
AFRICA / AU :
South Africa: Pay Dispute Led to Killing, Mother Says
By BARRY BEARAK/www.nytimes.com/Published: April 6, 2010
The white supremacist Eugene TerreBlanche was killed by two workers in a dispute about unpaid wages, according to the mother of a 15-year-old arrested for the crime. In an interview with the mother, The Associated Press reported that her son had said that some of Mr. TerreBlanche’s final words were, “I will kill you and throw you to hell.” Some white supremacists have attributed the killing to the renewed singing of an anti-apartheid song by Julius Malema, the head of the governing party’s youth league.
East Africa: EAC Turns Blind Eye to Ivory Row
6 April 2010/Daily Nation/allafrica.com
Nairobi — The East African Community has not intervened in a diplomatic row between Kenya and Tanzania over ivory stockpiles, preferring to adopt a wait-and-see attitude.
Dar es Salaam has accused Nairobi of undermining its bid at a recent Cites conference in Doha, Qatar, to be allowed to sell its ivory.
EAC secretary-general Juma Mwapachu said in Arusha at the weekend that the issue had not been discussed although the regional bloc was aware of the differences between the two.
“The Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) issue has never been discussed within the EAC,” he said.
He said although the bloc had a sectoral council dealing with wildlife and tourism, the matter had not been tabled.
Mr Mwapachu, however, said that prior to the Cites meeting, he was told by a senior Tanzanian official that the country’s bid would not succeed.
“This official happened to be in Nairobi early last month and called to inquire if we were aware of the differences between Tanzania and Kenya on the ivory issue and how it could impact the region,” he said.
The EAC boss said the regional bloc has adopted a wait-and-see position although it was concerned by the differences of the neighbouring states, which have a long history of cooperation on issues pertaining to wildlife.
Mr Mwapachu was speaking just a day after the Kenyan High Commissioner to Tanzania, Mr Mutinda Mutiso, denied snubbing Tanzania at the Cites talks.
Mr Mutiso denied that it was the Kenyan vote which derailed Tanzania’s plan to sell its 90 tonnes of ivory stockpiles, valued at $20 million.
He said although Tanzania lost the application by one vote, another 39 countries abstained.
Mr Mutiso admitted that the two governments did not meet to plan a common position before the Cites conference.
“If we had met, maybe things would have been different,” he said, hinting that Kenya was ready for talks “to iron out the differences and hammer out a common position”.
“We need to discuss the way forward. In any case, the ivory stockpiles won’t turn into elephants despite the noises being made by conservation lobbyists abroad,” he said.
Kenya’s failure to support Tanzania in its bid has generated debate in Arusha, the EAC headquarters and the country’s tourism and wildlife conservation hub.
Stakeholders in the tourism sector said the diametrically opposed positions of the two EAC member countries could rekindle the open “war” for tourism resources that went back to the 1970s.
While Tanzania opted for a tourism model with small but high paying visitors, Kenya preferred mass tourism which critics say affects the ecology of game reserves, especially the Maasai Mara bordering Tanzania’s Serengeti.
BREAKFAST DEALS: Going cold on Rio-BHP
6 Apr 2010/www.businessspectator.com.au/Daniella D’Ambrosio
BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto
Market chatter on commodities did not settle over the Easter break, with the tie-up between BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto again in the spotlight. With ongoing resistance already felt from European steel body Eurofer and Chinese authorities, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has again extended its investigation into the $126 billion iron ore joint venture in the Pilbara, The Australian reports. The competition regulator is said to be demanding more information from the two miners – reportedly the second time it has done so in six weeks – and a decision which was originally expected at the end of April has been put off until May 27. While the ACCC has previously said its main concern regarding the deal was that the entity would have the ability and incentive to withhold supply from global markets, other concerns are mainly in relation to the belief that competition on volumes, price and quality of iron ore would be substantially reduced. BHP and Rio, the number two and three iron ore producers in the world, might also be able to coordinate supply decisions with Brazilian world number one – and chief rival – Vale. Although it was the ACCC that suggested, when it published a statement of issues about the JV, that iron ore markets had changed since its initial review of a merger between the two Australian miners, it is analysts – Deutsche Bank the latest – that are driving the debate, talking down the attractiveness of the deal for Rio, after a surge in iron ore prices.
Iron ore, China, Gindalbie Metals
Keeping with this theme, a report on China Net, a government news website, yesterday said the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA) has called for a two-month boycott of iron ore purchases from Rio, BHP and Vale – a move criticised by federal trade minister Simon Crean. The proposed sanction, the ABC reports, is in protest at a purported price monopoly by the miners, but Crean said the demand for iron ore in China is too high for such a move to ensue. The call follows the three top miners’, and other Asian players’, decisions to move away from the annual benchmark pricing system and switch to a more flexible short-term pricing regime. The report on China Net quoted CISA’s head, Shan Shanghua, as saying the country had “ample” supplies to ensure normal steel production for two months, with production up 18 per cent year-on-year for January and February. Separately, Gindalbie Metals chief executive Garret Dixon told Sky News Business Channel the miner would look to the “big players” to determine at what price it will sell its iron ore to new Chinese joint venture partner, Angang Group International Trade Corporation (Ansteel). “What we do as a small guy I suppose is ride on the back of the negotiations of the big guys out in the market,” Dixon said. Last week, Gindalbie sealed one of Australia’s largest binding trade deals – signing a $70.6 billion iron ore sales contract with the Chinese company. The partnership is for the life of its Karara magnetite project in WA, which Gindalbie says has the potential to produce more than 30 million tonnes per annum for 30 years. Finally, on BHP, the miner and Eskom Holdings have agreed to review power supply contracts to BHP’s aluminium smelters in southern Africa, Bloomberg reports. The move comes as Eskom recovers from a huge loss posted last year. BHP’s smelters are said to be able to use more than 5 per cent of the installed capacity of Eskom’s power – which supplies almost all of South Africa’s electricity, Bloomberg says. In an emailed statement yesterday, BHP said “(a new agreement) may involve BHP Billiton assuming responsibility for the commodity pricing and currency exchange risks related to the contracts, which would in turn reduce the volatility of Eskom’s earnings and improve its balance sheet”.
Macarthur Coal, Gloucester Coal, Peabody Energy, Noble Group
Far be it for US miner Peabody Energy to enjoy the Easter celebrations – commodities trader Noble Group has told the miner it wished it stayed home and didn’t butt in on what it thought was a good deal between Australian miner Macarthur Coal and Gloucester Coal, according to Reuters. Noble said the condition in Peabody’s $3.3 billion bid for Macarthur – which was rejected as being too low – that the miner was not able to proceed with a proposed $832 million takeover of Gloucester (which it controls), was “opportunistic and crafty” and ruined their Easter weekend. The colourful statement posted to the Singapore stock exchange continued: “Life was great until a few days ago when, instead of jumping on their horses, the Americans charged into town on a Gulfstream jet for the afternoon and plunked a bid down that was a great deal for them, and not, in our view, anywhere near what was already on the table”. It is not yet known what Macarthur is planning to do following the rejection of the $13 per share offer – thought its major shareholders have been holding continued talks over the past few days.
INR
Keeping with coal, it has been reported that American coal miner INR is planning a $1 billion listing on the local sharemarket, in keeping with its strategy to grow Down Under. The consolidation in the coal sector that has been underway in recent years will give INR room to move on the ASX, the AFR reports, and will increase its exposure to China, India and other parts of Asia. INR will sell down a majority of its holding in the float, with chief executive Gary Rogliano telling the paper the company chose Australia over other exchanges because the local currency will help it buy into coal projects offerings here.
Lihir Gold
Australia’s second-largest listed gold company, Lihir Gold, is still gunning for an increased offer by Newcrest Mining. The latest source report, according to the SMH, has some of the company’s major shareholders rejecting the $9.2 billion takeover, with none so far saying Lihir should accept the offer. A Newcrest spokeswoman told the paper the deal wasn’t vital to them, but no decision has been made yet as to its next step. The three biggest shareholders of Newcrest; BlackRock, Colonial First State and Fidelity; are also the three biggest in Lihir – making for some interesting negotiations. Morgan Stanley analyst Cameron Judd said a higher offer could potentially come from another suitor – valuing it within a pretty broad range of between $3.87 – the current price of the share offer – and $6.50 a share. Deutsche Bank and RBS weighed in too, touting higher prices. Lihir’s shares last traded at $4.04. Alternative suitors have been named by Goldman Sachs JBWere, who have said the only companies big enough to make a bid would be Barrick, Newmont, Goldcorp and Randgold, The Age reports.
RBS, Virgin Money, National Australia Bank
The first-round deadline to bid for the branches of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is today, with a late contender coming into the fray. American billionaire Wilbur Ross has backed Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Money inspired move to take on the British banking market. Numerous media reports have Branson ready to announce plans to sell a 21 per cent stake in his company – of which he currently owns outright – to Ross for £100 million. This deal would be the start of a far-reaching strategy to expand in the UK, with a further £500 million earmarked by Ross, best known for his sale of US-based International Steel Group to Mittal Steel in 2004, to help kick-start acquisition opportunities, Dow Jones Newswires reports. There is plenty on offer in the beleaguered British banking sector, following numerous government bail outs at the height of the financial crisis – but it is the upcoming sale of RBS’s branches that has said to whet Branson’s appetite. Virgin will be coming in to direct opposition with National Australia Bank, Spanish lend
er’s Banco Santander and BBVA who have expressed a desire to bid for RBS’s branches, Reuters reports – which were ordered to be sold after receiving £46 million in capital from the UK government, which now owns 84 per cent of the bank. Britain’s Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph put the expected bid price at £2 billion.
Wrapping up
It has been reported that Royal Dutch Shell and PetroChina have received approval from the Foreign Investment Review Board for its $3.3 billion takeover of coal-seam-gas operator Arrow Energy. The AFR says the all-clear letter came through last week. To gaming, and Betfair’s Australian chief executive, Andrew Twaits, says the company wants to offer financial betting alongside its current operations, The Australian reports. Twaits said Australia is missing out on the tax it could get from the $790 million a year from Australians are pumping into foreign cybercasinos. Twaits also touted more consolidation in the domestic market. To overseas, and on Sunday US oil and gas explorer and producer SandRidge Energy said it would pay $US1.6 billion in cash and stock for Arena Resources to position itself as a major producer in Texas, according to the WSJ, with the combined company to be valued at around $US6.20 billion. And finally, to automakers and Germany’s Daimler AG is expected to announce an alliance with the partnership of France’s Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. of Japan in the next two days. A deal would involve cooperation on small cars and cross shareholdings, the WSJ reports.
Madeleine Heffernan is on leave, returning April 12.
UN /ONU :
Madonna in Mercy trip to Malawi – pictures
6/04/2010 /www.mirror.co.uk
In heavy-duty boots, Madonna cranks a hand-operated water pump on a visit to Malawi.
The pop queen, 52, lent a hand at the UN-backed Millennium Village in the southeast African republic’s capital Lilongwe.
And today she will lay the first brick of a £10million academy for girls she is funding.
David and Mercy, her adopted children, will be reunited with relatives during her week-long stay, with daughter Lourdes, 13.
Madonna said: “It pains me to see children denied their most basic needs to survive because they were born into poverty.
“I have started many projects to try to make a difference to their lives and this village is one of my proudest achievements.”
USA :
Obama to meet at the White House with black church leaders
By Hamil R. Harris and Krissah Thompson/Washington Post Staff Writer /Tuesday, April 6, 2010
President Obama will sit down Tuesday with about 20 black religious leaders, including representatives of the major African American denominations, in the second White House meeting in three months to discuss the needs of the black community.
The president has faced growing questions about whether he has done enough to help African Americans deal with the nation’s economic downturn. Blacks have been hurt more than other communities by the lack of jobs and the difficulty in obtaining bank financing, among other issues, and some — including political commentator Tavis Smiley and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus — say that Obama has not responded urgently.
As the criticism intensified last month, the White House paid little public attention to the critics while aides privately pushed back, citing examples of the president’s agenda, such as health care and education, that specifically benefit African Americans.
Tuesday’s meeting appeared to be a clear sign that Obama has heard the complaints, especially because it precedes a gathering with a larger group of ministers in the East Room for an Easter prayer breakfast. But a White House spokesman rejected the conclusion.
“This meeting is not about politics,” spokesman Corey Ealons said. “It is about connecting with key faith leaders on the challenges impacting our nation. President Obama appreciates the acute challenges facing African Americans across the country and respects the work these pastors are doing to support the communities they serve.”
The preachers, who represent some of the largest African American churches in the country, have written an open letter to the president that praises the job Obama has done and encourages him to “stay the course.”
“President Obama has pursued policies that are crucial for our communities and the nation as a whole, and we cannot afford to lose courage and fortitude at this juncture,” reads the letter, which more than 30 ministers signed. “President Obama has fought for us — and we must fight for him. . . . We have been troubled by the trivial debates that have become more prominent in Washington and across the country, while at the same time our families are facing historic challenges.”
The public show of support and its welcome by the White House is a shift from Obama’s seeming detachment from the question of whether he should have a “black agenda.” In the past, he has responded by saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that his job “is to be president of the whole country.” This time, he is letting the ministers sing his praises.
“He is the president of the United States, not just the president of black people, the president of Latino people,” said Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. “We expect him to put together policies and an agenda that will impact all of America and not just one special interest.”
The letter, to be presented to Obama by the Rev. T. DeWitt Smith Jr., president of the 2.5 million-member Progressive National Baptist Convention, outlines Obama’s accomplishments on behalf of “the least of these,” citing changes in education policy, health care and financial regulation.
“We are in the mix here,” McKenzie said. “If you are talking about health care, you are talking about African Americans. If you talk about unemployment, African Americans are losing jobs disproportionately.”
Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, said that the president “is honored to have deep support in the African American church.”
Tuesday’s meeting is the second at the White House this year to discuss issues primarily affecting blacks. Two months ago, Obama sat down with NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, National Urban League President Marc Morial and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had requested the visit.
Afterward, the civil rights leaders said Obama had been willing to hear their ideas, and they restated their support for the administration. But in the days after, Smiley criticized the men for not putting more pressure on Obama to carve out a specific black agenda.
Smiley then held a forum in Chicago — attended by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and academics Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, among others — where a number of African American speakers said that Obama needs to do more for blacks.
“The bottom line is the president needs to take the issues of black America more seriously because black folks are catching hell, number one,” Smiley said after the forum. “Number two: This theory that a rising tide lifting all boats — that theory was soundly dismissed. Thirdly, because black people are suffering disproportionately, it requires a disproportionate response.”
Smiley’s forum drew criticism from Sharpton, who accused Smiley of being a “critic of the president” and creating unnecessary division.
A similar tug of war has occurred between the president and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who have said that Obama should do more to target aid and jobs for poor blacks. Caucus members have said that key people in the Obama administration have taken them for granted.
Despite such fissures with black political leaders, the president’s popularity among black voters remains sky-high, said David Bositis, a pollster with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a think tank focused on black issues.
“Obama couldn’t be doing better among African Americans,” Bositis said. “There’s absolutely nothing there in terms of a problem in terms of African Americans. The opposition from Southern white conservatives . . . just makes African Americans more strongly bonded to Obama.”
Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.
South Africa: Terreblanche’s Death Highlights Racial Divide
Luphert Chilwane/ Businessday/6 April 2010
Johannesburg — WHAT a relief! I feel better now.” Those are John Mosegathebe’s feelings after finding himself at the receiving end of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene TerreBlanche’s abuse, during a three-year stint as a cattle herder.
He says he was fired last week, after being paid only R300, instead of his R900 wages.
“I was asking myself why he had to live so long, having assaulted so many people. This is a relief to us. I feel better now,” says the 63-year-old.
Mosegathebe’s sentiments are shared by many at Tshing township, 5km from TerreBlanche’s farm in Ventersdorp.
Some jumped with joy yesterday, describing the killing as a huge relief to the community that depends largely on farms for employment.
They screamed excitedly, saying they would now live their lives without fear of being brutalised by him.
“This man was so brutal and heartless,” says Mosegathebe.
“He used to assault me on a daily basis for no reason and showed no respect for my poor health.”
Pakiso Diphaphang also does not have nice things to say about his former employer.
“I used to ask myself why God was keeping him alive, having killed so many people.” Diphaphang says he was fired for missing a day’ s work.
The feelings of those in the township were in stark contrast to those who were close to or admired TerreBlanche.
Angry residents and Afrikaners from other provinces laid flowers at the gate to TerreBlanche’s farm.
“He fought a lot for us and our language. And if we have more people like that in every community, things in SA would be much different,” says Rean Olivier, an AWB member who travelled from Johannesburg to the North West with his wife Isabella to pay their respects.
He says that African National Congress (ANC) Youth League president Julius Malema needed to be killed to prevent a war between blacks and whites.
“I think Malema has to be taken out to clear the playing field. This killing is a sign of war between black and white and this murder has definitely made Afrikaners racist, including myself,” says Olivier.
But the official line is guarded.
“Although we are shocked and angry with his killing, there would be no revenge from our members,” says AWB spokesman Pieter Steyn.
“We believe his killing is politically motivated, aimed at attacking white farmers. We are satisfied with the government’s response so far,” says Steyn.
He retracted the party’s previous statements to kill. His organisation would approach the United Nations to ask for help in establishing an independent “boere state”.
“We have our own customs to respect and we need to govern ourselves,” he says, and is supported by Annetjie Barnard, another AWB follower.
“Since Malema’s ‘kill the boer ” song, we feel that we are under siege, and the situation gets worse every day,” Barnard says.
Malema told reporters in Zimbabwe yesterday the song was not a factor in TerreBlanche’s murder.
“We have nothing to do with his death. People are just mobilising the right wing against us and trying to intimidate us,” he said after meeting President Robert Mugabe.
The ANC also condemned the linking of the song to TerreBlanche’s death. “Any claim that blacks intend to harm other race groups … is baseless and devoid of all truth,” the party said in a statement.
Police yesterday prepared for the court appearance of the suspects, a 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy, arrested for bludgeoning TerreBlanche to death. They are to appear at Ventersdorp Magistrate’s Court today.
Hundreds of people were expected to converge on the court
The mother of the teenager said her son owned up to the killing.
“My son admitted that they did the killing,” she said in an interview with AP Television News conducted from her home in Tshing township. With Sapa and Reuters
CANADA :
Canadian military and Andrew Leslie: All dressed up; nowhere to go
Jobless General mirrors military searching for new mission
Published On Tue Apr 6 2010/www.thestar.com/By James Travers
National Affairs Columnist NEW YORK – Andrew Leslie is a metaphor for the army he led so capably during four testing years of combat. Fit, smart and looking for someplace to go after Afghanistan describes the armed forces as well as a General now in limbo waiting for a new assignment.
Negotiations underway here could see Leslie take command of the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission. While leading the complex, politically sensitive Congo operation would suit the cerebral Leslie and compliment Canada’s current bid for a Security Council seat, returning to Africa demands answers about this country’s future international role just as it would require the armed forces to exorcise lingering demons.
Somalia, Rwanda and a ‘60s Congo mission all stir horror memories that the military’s stellar Kandahar performance is putting into perspective even as it pushes them deeper into the past. Officially now in a peacekeeping rather than a peacemaking phase, the UN operation remains dangerously problematic. Some five million lives have been lost since civil war broke out in 1998, brutal fighting continues in the country’s deceptively beautiful eastern regions and the shaky central government wants foreign troops out before Congo celebrates 50 years of independence this summer.
Those fragile conditions twice convinced Ottawa to refuse previous UN requests to lead the mission. Tthe searing Somalia experience made politicians wary of any large Africa deployment and military leaders didn’t want to put one of their own in the same impossibly impotent situation as Romeo Dallaire during the Rwanda genocide.
Once etched in stone, those attitudes are now softening as the Afghanistan mission winds down and Conservatives, increasingly confident after four years in power, are more willing to consider a wider range of offshore options. Those shifts make it only mildly surprising that Canada signaled its renewed interest to the UN and put Leslie’s name in play.
Less certain is the scope of any Canadian commitment. In an interview here during last week’s Haiti donor conference, Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said the federal government must assess multiple factors, including mission size and cost.
Hanging over that decision is a use-it-or-lose-it dilemma. Nearly ten years in Afghanistan gives Canada a hardened military with highly regarded counter-insurgency capacity. But sustaining that fitness, as well as justifying spending already slowed in last month’s budget, will be difficult without active deployment after July 2011 when the Afghanistan combat mission ends.
So the armed forces, like Leslie who was left jobless when Chief of Defence Staff Walt Natynczyk shuffled top commanders two week ago, is looking for meaningful work. Fortunately for both—if not for global stability—there’s no shortage of options.
From nearby Haiti to the ends of the earth, more than three dozen failed or failing states require more help than the leading industrial countries, struggling with recession and against terrorism, are providing. Canada, with its histories of peacekeeping and exporting democratic practices, is an obvious favorite to take up some of the slack.
Missing from that supply and demand dynamic is a domestic debate. Canada is preparing to leave Afghanistan in much the same way as it arrived—with little political discussion and even less consideration of the policy implications.
Blame for that vacuum can be traced first to Liberal and then Conservative governments that never settled on an Afghanistan narrative. With no clear or consistent objectives, Canada’s overarching purpose in committing $20 billion and now 141 lives to the mission remains as fog-bound and unexamined as the decision to withdraw with the job far from finished.
Parallels with Leslie’s situation are as worrying as they are apparent. In the absence of a well-defined foreign policy and fearful of kick-starting a polarizing political debate before the next federal election, the Prime Minister and his rivals are content to let the future unfold with as little public fuss as possible.
Going back to Africa may involve not much more than finding a temporary good fit for Leslie, a startlingly bright three-star general. But it’s a mistake for Canada to leave Afghanistan without full consideration of what’s been achieved, at what cost, and what, if anything, it wants to do now with such hard-earned expertise.
U.S., Canada turn tables on China cyberspying ring
Tuesday, April 06, 2010/By John Markoff and David Barboza, The New York Times/www.post-gazette.com
TORONTO — Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and U.S. computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry.
In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.
The Toronto spy hunters not only learned what kinds of material had been stolen, but were able to see some of the actual documents — including classified assessments about security in several Indian states, and confidential embassy documents about India’s relationships in West Africa, Russia and the Middle East. The intruders breached the systems of independent analysts, taking reports on several Indian missile systems. They also obtained a year’s worth of the Dalai Lama’s personal e-mail messages.
The intruders even stole documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the attacks, one chink in computer security can leave many nations exposed.
“It’s not only that you’re only secure as the weakest link in your network,” said Toronto team member Rafal Rohozinski. “But in an interconnected world, you’re only as secure as the weakest link in the global chain of information.”
As recently as early March, India’s Communications Minister Sachin Pilot told reporters that government networks had been attacked by China, but that “not one attempt has been successful.” But on March 24, the Toronto researchers said, they contacted intelligence officials in India and told them of the spy ring they had been tracking. They requested and were given instructions on how to dispose of the classified and restricted documents.
On Monday, Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said officials were “looking into” the report, but had no official statement.
The attacks look like the work of a criminal gang based in Sichuan province, but like all cyberattacks, it is easy to mask the true origin, the researchers said. Given the intruders’ sophistication and targets of the operation, the researchers said, it is reasonable to suspect that the Chinese government approved of the spying.
When asked about the new report Monday, Ye Lao, a propaganda official in Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, said “it’s ridiculous” to suggest the Chinese government might have played a role. “The Chinese government considers hacking a cancer to the whole society,” he said.
Tensions have risen between China and the United States this year after a statement by Google in January that the company and dozens of other businesses had been the victims of computer intrusions coming from China.
The spy operation appears to be different both from the Internet intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China, which the Canadian researchers identified in March of last year. Ghostnet used computer servers largely based on the island of Hainan to steal documents from the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet, and government and corporations in more than 103 countries.
The Ghostnet investigation led the investigators to this second Internet spy operation, the subject of their new report, titled “Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation into cyber-espionage 2.0.”
The new report shows the India-focused spy ring made extensive use of social networks like Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, blog.com, Baidu Blogs and Yahoo Mail, to automate the control of computers once they had been infected.
The Canadian researchers cooperated in their investigation with a volunteer U.S. group of security experts at the Shadowserver Foundation, which focuses on Internet criminal activity.
“This would definitely rank in the sophisticated range,” said Steven Adair, a security researcher with the group. “While we don’t know exactly who’s behind it, we know they selected their targets with great care.”
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AUSTRALIA :
ASX blocks Timis’s listing of African Petroleum
Michael Bennet /From: The Australian / www.theaustralian.com.au/April 06, 2010
MINING identity Frank Timis’s plans to list his African Petroleum on the Australian Securities Exchange have run into trouble, with the ASX halting Global Iron’s planned backdoor listing of the company.
Global – chaired by Perth mining mogul and good friend Tony Sage – today said the ASX would not list Global if the $500 million deal went through, despite Global receiving commitments for $130m of a proposed equity raising for the acquisition.
Global, which last traded on March 25, said it would appeal the ruling and requested its shares remain suspended until the appeal was heard.
But the ASX “disallowed” the request with the view the market was fully informed and Global’s securities emerged from suspension, last trading flat at 45c.
The Perth-based company said the ASX’s decision centres on concerns over the influence Timis will have on the company’s continuous disclosure obligations.
Timis, who would become an executive director and substantial shareholder of the new ASX entity to be renamed African Petroleum Corporation, is most famous for his time at London-headquartered firm Regal Petroleum.
Romanian-born Timis was chairman at Regal and left after it was fined by regulators following a share price crash in 2005 when it emerged that its giant oilfields were unviable.
It was also reported in London’s The Times late last year that the London Stock Exchange put the brakes on Timis’s plans to float African Petroleum on the Alternative Investment Market, or AIM.
Timis is still the chairman of African Minerals, the largest mining company on AIM and largest equity holder of Sage’s other listed vehicle, Cape Lambert Resources with about 20 per cent.
But Global said Timis would not sit on a continuous disclosure committee it planned to form and would not be responsible for approving or determining when an announcement should be issued.
In a move to appease the ASX’s disclosure requirements, Global today also said it had received $130m of commitments from “leading UK-based instituions”.
Global claimed this was an “indication of the support from institutional investors as to Mr Timis’ involvement with the company”.
The raising is to be done at 55c to raise up to $230m. But the firm is now in a race against time, with the commitments from UK institutions possibly lost if the transaction is not done by April 30.
In more bad news for Sage, the ASX today also said it would not allow International Petroleum’s securities back into quotation unless it aborts its deal to acquire Timis’s privately-held Eastern Petroleum.
In an almost identical release, the ASX said its concerns centred on Timis and disclosure issues.
The similar backdoor listing would give Timis about 70 per cent of International Petroleum, formerly known as International Goldfields.
International, which Sage also chairs, hasn’t traded since November 23 when it fetched 33.5c.
Cape Lambert is the biggest shareholder of Global and International Petroleum, and he also owns about 11 per cent and 1 per cent of each respectively.
Sage holds about 5 per cent of Cape Lambert.
bennetm@theaustralian.com.au
EUROPE :
TRADE NEGOTIATIONS: EU faults Mkapa on Epa
By The Citizen Reporter/060410
The European Union (EU) has defended the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) saying the arrangement does not aim at re-introducing colonialism in Africa.
Instead, the EU delegation in the country said that to the contrary, the arrangement is meant to boost Africa’s economy.
This was in response to this paper queries following the recent remarks by former President Benjamin Mkapa in Nairobi, warning east African states to be wary of EPA as it was another Europe form of colonising the continent.
Speaking at the Pan African media conference organised by Nation Media group two weeks ago, President Mkapa warned that EPA was meant to stifle Africa’s growth.
He described EPA, which is being championed by the EU, could be another “scramble for Africa”, and was likely to weaken the regional bloc economically.
But European Commission told this paper that EPA is concerned with promoting the regional integration process and notably supporting measures taken by regional groupings themselves to open up trade with their neighbours and the wider international community.
“While they may have been born out of necessity – driven by the need for any preferential measures given by the EU to be WTO compatible – they are also an integral part of the comprehensive partnership between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of countries,” said EC when reacting to The Citizen queries.
EU noted that given the nature the negotiations between Europe and Africa on EPA have been conducted, the agreement provides predictability and stability to all business operators – local and foreign.
“The often made allegations that EAC markets would be flooded with EU products from day one of implementation of the Agreement are simply untrue,” said EU noting that the carefully drafted EAC list of exclusions continues to provide tariff protection to sensitive areas of the EAC economies.
Such sections have been listed as agricultural products and consumer goods, which will be liberalised over a long period of time, according to EU.
According to European countries, this arreangement “can yield major benefits to both EAC producers as well as consumers.”
While producers are projected to have access to cheaper and better quality inputs into the production processes in the EAC, the arrangement could be turned into a competitive advantage in comparison with other regions and can become an incentive for increased productive inward investment into EAC countries.
From a consumer point of view, EU says, EAC citizens will have access to a greater variety of goods, at a lower cost while at the same time, the safeguard clauses and the list of exclusions, together with the long transition period for liberalisation of a number of final products on the EAC side will ensure that Tanzanian producers of agricultural and other sensitive products will not be facing additional competition from EU producers.
But a document prepared by South Centre, formerly known as South South Commission, availed to this paper by Mr Mkapa who is its Board Chairman, says EPAs provide the wrong development model for Africa, and will jeopardize African countries’ development and regional integration prospects, rather than support them.
The document, which this paper been serialising, show instance that until now, rapid tariff cuts in sub Saharan Africa since the 1980s resulted in deindustrialisation.
The Centre says EPA discourages African countries from having an appropriate trade policy to support increasing production capacities both in agriculture and industry.
“No country has developed as a result of drastically lowering their tariffs during their development process. All developed and advanced developing countries have progressed based on the strategic use of their tariffs, combined with policies that have supported the development of their industrial and also agricultural sectors,” notes the document.
Mr Mkapa’s warning was also supported b y the ;private private sector and civil society who said EA countries should take his advise seriously.
“Mr Mkapa’s remarks have come as a consolation to us… this is what we have been advocating for the past five years,” a member of the Tanzania Civil Society Trade Coalition (TCSTC), Mr Abubakar Mohammed Ali, told The Citizen.
“In principle, the WTO has virtually nothing to offer to poor nations… Mr Mkapa is experienced and well educated. He is conversant with macro and microeconomics, and understands EPAs better than many of us do. We will be making a serious mistake if we take his advice lightly,” said Mr Moses Kulaba, the executive secretary of Agenda Participation 2000.
The commitment to negotiate EPA between the EU and a number of regional configurations determined by the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group members themselves dates back to June 2000.
But a common position on EPAs adopted by members of the private sector indicates that the sector is still sceptical about the negotiations, and frustrated by their inability to access the EU market due to tough sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules.
Their concerns are based on the fact that EAC businesses usually find it hard to enter the EU markets due to their level of compliance with SPS and technical measures set by the EU and retailers in EU member countries.
CHINA :
SA and China: Let’s get it started
Felicity Duncan/www.moneyweb.co.za/06 April 2010
China’s growing importance.
PHILADELPHIA – One of the smartest moves a country could have made ten years ago was to hitch itself to the Chinese economic wagon. Since Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping introduced economic reform in the late 1970s, China has undergone a remarkable transformation from poverty-riddled agrarian backwater to global economic powerhouse, with GDP growth rates that have bobbed around 10% a year for the last decade.
Luckily for us, South Africa’s leaders were smart enough to see the writing on the wall, and back in 1998 South Africa established diplomatic relations with the PRC. Today, from virtually nothing, China is South Africa’s number one trading partner, supplanting the long-reigning USA in 2009.
Last year, South Africa exported roughly R500bn-worth of goods, and imported around R525bn-worth; China accounted for about 20% of this. According to the Department of Trade and Industry, “total trade between [China and South Africa] is R119.7bn, and grew by 2% in 2009, as compared to R118bn in 2008. In a period of eight years, trade has grown from R23bn in 2003 to R119.7bn at the end of 2009.”
Those are some big numbers, that’s some impressive growth, and, it’s encouraging that, even during the recession and economic downturn of 2008/9, trade between our two countries grew. And there’s even more good news; China is also an active investor in South Africa. According to Jia Qinglin, chairman of China’s top advisory body, the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, who was in South Africa last week on an official visit, by the end of 2009, Chinese investments in South Africa were worth around R7bn.
Despite these impressive numbers, the South African government hasn’t rested on its Chinese laurels. Just last week, it oversaw the signing of R2.3bn-worth of contracts between 26 South African and Chinese companies.
Minister of Trade and Industry Rob Davies and Jia witnessed the signing of the contracts in Pretoria last week as part of Jia’s goodwill visit. According to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the contracts “will see Chinese companies sourcing products such as mohair, bulk wine, wool, frozen fish, copper, manganese, granite blocks, ferrochrome and lobsters from South Africa to the value of R2.3bn ($311m).”
This is not the first time we’ve seen such an event – back in 2007, for example, Chinese and South Africa companies signed $143m-worth of trading contracts – but it was the biggest-ever single purchase that China has made from South Africa, and it represents a powerful statement of the two countries’ commitment to economic relations.
However, as always, the South Africa/China love story is not without its problems. Generally speaking, South Africa exports a range of minerals, metals and agricultural products to the resource-hungry PRC and they sell us electronics and various manufactured goods in return. The terms of last week’s agreements illustrate this – we will be selling the Chinese bulk wine and lobsters, rather than value-added manufactured goods. The South African government and South African businesses would love to see that mix change.
What’s more, like most countries around the world, we import more from China than we export to them, although our situation is better than some. According to the DTI, “Our trade statistics depict a trade surplus in favour of China since 2003, but this declined from R46bn in 2008 to R22bn in 2009.” Although not in itself a problem, the deficit does suggest that there is room to develop our exports to China.
At last week’s event, Jia adroitly addressed some of these concerns. He pledged, on behalf of China, to import more value-added products from South Africa to “optimise bilateral trade mix” as part of a general drive to grow imports from our country. He also said that “the two countries should deepen two-way investment” – South African businesses have invested about R4bn in China.
He added that China would encourage businesses with strong capacity and good credit to expand investment in South Africa’s manufacturing so as to transfer technology, train staff and spur employment.
So what’s China’s angle in all this? For South Africa, China is clearly a key partner, and we have a clear interest in getting them to invest more and to import more of our manufactured goods. However, South Africa is only China’s second-largest African trading partner; oil-rich Angola takes first place with $25bn in trade, compared to our $14bn, and this is all just a drop in the ocean compared to China’s trade with the massive consumer markets of the European Union and the United States.
However, China has extensive business and economic interests throughout the African continent and has often stated that it wishes to further develop these interests. Specifically, China is interested in resources – metals, minerals, oil, coal and food – that it needs to fuel its modernisation efforts, feed its people and maintain its vast manufacturing operations. Given this insatiable thirst for resources, it’s in China’s interest to have positive relations with countries that have rich veins of resources, like the oil of Angola and Sudan, and South Africa’s platinum and coal. China prefers to trade for what it needs, rather than trying to seize resources by force – a wise strategy given that wars inevitably turn out to cost more than they earn.
Thus, China has an interest in building a good relationship with us, and the rest of Africa. We should use this to our advantage, because it’s a pretty safe bet that the smartest move a country could make in the next ten years is to hitch itself to the Chinese economic wagon.
‘Silver lining’ around EPAs
By Chiwoyu Sinyangwe / www.postzambia.com/Tue 06 Apr. 2010
SO much has been said about the ongoing negotiations between the European Commission of the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) grouping countries.
Indeed, so much will still be said for as long as the negotiations drag on. The new trade agreement being negotiated is aptly called the Economic Partnership Agreements… EPAs as the name is fondly called by both its proponents and opponents.
Having spent the second week of March in the company of other journalists from Cameroon, Comoros, Congo (Brazzaville), Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Gabon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Madagascar, Nigeria, Chad and Zimbabwe touring the European capital, Brussels, allow me to ‘risk’ concluding that the standoff in the EPAs is artificial.
At least, this is the impression I got having listened to key members of the European Commission connected to trade negotiations; making comparisons with concerns of ACP countries.
The demands of both sides are very clear: The EU will completely open its market to ACP exporters. No more duties, no more quotas.
There will be transitions for sugar and rice but for all other products the tariffs and quotas will be eliminated from day one.
The ACP countries will not be asked to match this offer, and the tariff reductions they do offer will be subject to the flexibility provided by World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules which means the right to protect sensitive markets and use long transition times for change.
In short, the ACP countries will have to make their markets 80 per cent permeable to European finished goods. Reciprocally, the European markets will have to open 100 per cent to goods from Africa. That is the gist of the negotiations and that sounds very rosy on face value. That sounding very rosy, one wonders why there has been continued resistance from ACP, especially African countries to sign the EPAs?
From the African perspective, EPAs portray an attempt by Europe to disintegrate regional groupings which in recent times have made some progress, albeit, at a very snail’s pace. EPAs are seen as an attempt by Europe to pulverize the fragile African industries and perpetually maintaining the continent as a net exporter of raw material and yet a huge market for finished goods. EPAs are seen as an attempt by Europeans to hold back the fast flowing shift for Africa’s economic relationships from its north to the Far East – China!
Africa’s view on EPAs can be summed as an attempt by Europe to push its agenda and erode development successes scored by its 77 former colonies congregating under the ACP umbrella grouping.
Last January, African Union (AU) chairman and Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika said his country would not be part of the EPAs in their current format since the intention of Europe was to divide Africa.
“EPAs are a divide-and-rule tactic being advanced by Europe for selfish interests and Malawi will not sign until all concerns are addressed and I know all these manoeuvres since I was among the pioneers of regional integration,” says President Wa Mutharika.
President Wa Mutharika, who is former Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) secretary general, says “the agreements will be signed over my dead body!”
That is how the EPAs are loathed. That is gravity of resistance among the African top brass.
The negotiations on these EPAs started in September 2002 and were supposed to be completed by December 31, 2007, as a WTO waiver on the non-compatibility of the EU’s preferential trade relations with ACP countries would expire by then.
I just do not see the EU continue discussing with us endlessly.
One thing is very clear: These agreements will go on whether ACP wants it or not.
“…But the problem is that you will have to show me how the EPAs will create the inequality. I would like to know the flaws in EPAs… to just say EPAs are a failure is not a solution. The EPAs is a model that has been worked all over the world,” EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gught told a group of journalists from ACP in Brussels.
The EU is certainly resolved and the free trade agreements will go on. I just find it illogical for African countries to continue resisting agreements that they eventually have to sign. Why not start preparing the industries, the people and indeed, the country for this eventuality?
The aspect of regional integration is one that has dogged this continent for a long time. The EU could be blamed for countering the efforts of Africa’s integration but introspection is crucial here. Apart from multiplicity of regional blocs, for a continent with one billion people in 53 countries to have five regional groupings is incredible.
Sadly, these groups have spent more efforts and resources pursuing issues that protect their political interests rather than economic development.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional group of west African countries founded on May 28, 1975 has spent more time and resources stabilising the political environment in the region rather than their macro-economy and trade relations. The trend is almost the same with all other groupings. The East African Community (EAC) could be excused but things are not any better.
Regional integration should be seen more of Africa’s agenda than Europe. It’s up to Africa to foster this regional integration which has weakened the continent’s bargaining power.
Sources close to the transaction indicate that African countries negotiate in a group of countries with an average of six delegates per country while EU comprises only an average of three member committees. Maybe that is one area that needs revision; some officers will certainly have to forego their much desired allowances and per diem, but certainly there is need to streamline the way we do our business in the interest of orderliness and to ensure progress.
The signing of EPAs by individual countries or specific sub groupings within ESA, Southern African Development Community (SADC) or ECOWAS will establish multiple and different trade regimes that would eventually undermine current regional integration agendas. It’s only Africa that can preserve its interests.
Almost 50 years after independence, African communities are still struggling to trade among themselves. In fact, the least of Africa’s trade relation routes lie in intra-trade.
“Whether it is Europe or Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the dollars are the same, and in fact, trading among ourselves is less complicated than going to Europe,” commerce minister Felix Mutati said.
Africa’s competitiveness is still the lowest in the world and instead of deferring the EPAs, Africa must start addressing these bottlenecks because the EPAs are certainly coming.
In trade, competitiveness plays a major role and if Africa is to participate in the global market, the continent must become competitive and this is not just for the EU markets but the whole world. Access to EU and international markets for Zambia will require the country to work on competitiveness through reducing the cost of doing business. If only more energies could be spent on attaining that rather than resisting the inevitable.
I know De Gught says “I have no problem with Chinese increasing influence in Africa, but” but I hope China acts within the international trade rule, and if it does that, then it is entitled to be there in Africa,” but reality is that everyone wants to get a benefit from their investments. After all EU has been the biggest provider of development assistance to Afri
ca. I know Europe is willing to provide funds to help the country deal with the supply constraints, but that can only be seen if we attempt to start seeing the silver lining of this cloud called EPAs. The country needs to start maximising seriously on the EDF.
The fear of the local markets being flooded by foreign finished goods does not sound entirely strong an argument. We have no concrete trade agreements with China but who has escaped Chinese products on the local market? The other source, South Africa is the same. In fact, one of the contentious issues in the SADC FTA is fear by member countries that their fragile domestic industries will eventually be swallowed by the gigantic South Africa commerce sector…on that basis, the fear of European goods flooding the local market sound more of a myth than practical.
What I know is that most international agreements are complex and the powerful will always dominate and exploit the weak and I can take my journalistic gymnastics to suggest that the principles that apply to EPAs are not very different.
Zambia and other countries should start devising ways of surviving the aftermath of the EPAs rather than deferring signing of the trade agreement.
This is the opportune time to start seriously exploring the clauses such as graduation and nurturing of infant industries in view of free trade agreements, emphasizing so much the component of development aid and the general development path within the framework of the EPAs. Issues of market access will certainly be indispensable…if only we can expend our little energies in those areas.
It is amazing that some countries are negotiating the EPAs with the EU to promote market access for products and goods like bananas, honey and fish, things that only succeed in going to rot in this country due to lack of ready market. By the way, these products are their mainstay. It’s their copper. I just cannot imagine how many impoverished rural dwellers can be unshackled from the jaws of poverty, if only we provide market access for them…only if we can see a silver lining within the dark cloud of EPAs.
It is therefore gratifying to learn that De Gught has shown strong willingness to meet Mutati and Malawian trade minister Eunice Kazembe next month to discuss the stalled EPAs negotiations in the ESA region. It would be interesting to see the number of delegates the two ministers will carry.
INDIA :
Valero crude oil in hijacked tanker
By VICKI VAUGHAN San Antonio Express-News /www.chron.com/April 6, 2010
Somali pirates hijacked a South Korean supertanker Sunday in the Indian Ocean carrying almost 2 million barrels of crude oil purchased by San Antonio-based refiner Valero Energy Corp.
“We own the cargo,” Valero spokesman Bill Day said Monday. “We’re monitoring the situation and we’re hopeful it can be resolved quickly and safely,” Day said, adding that this is the first time a ship carrying Valero-purchased oil has been hijacked.
The oil, worth about $170 million at current prices, was loaded in Iraq and headed to Louisiana, the South Korean ministry said.
Crew of 24 aboard
The hijacking won’t affect gasoline prices on the U.S. Gulf Coast because the cargo was still about a month away from arriving on the Gulf Coast, Day said. “We have plenty of time to find a replacement supply and there is plenty of oil around,” he said. “I don’t want to make this sound like it isn’t a big deal, but we buy cargos of this size quite often.”
Valero buys crude oil from around the world for its 15 refineries, which have the capacity to process 2.8 million barrels of crude oil a day.
The seized tanker, the 300,000-ton Samho Dream, is owned by South Korea’s Samho Shipping and was seized in waters about 930 miles southeast of the Gulf of Aden off the coast of East Africa, the South Korean ministry said.
The tanker had 24 crew members aboard, five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos.
At midday Monday, a South Korean navy destroyer was rushing to intercept the tanker. But the warship will need a little more than a day to catch up to the tanker, Kim Young-sun, a spokesman of South Korea’s Foreign Ministry told the Associated Press.
“We’re doing this in cooperation with the ships of our allies,” Kim said on Monday, declining further comment and citing efforts to “ensure the safety of the crewmen and the success of possible negotiations.”
Seas calmer in spring
A maritime analyst doubted the South Korean warship would launch an assault on the pirates believed to be holding Samho Dream because such action would put the crew at great risk.
Previously, when Somali pirates have captured supertankers, naval forces patrolling the Gulf of Aden have only moved close to the pirate lairs where the vessels have been anchored to monitor them until they are released.
In a statement, the Combined Maritime Forces, a multinational, anti-piracy task force, said piracy surges in the spring because of calmer seas off the east coast of Africa, but not all attacks are successful. “Over the last week there have been 12 unsuccessful attacks and three successful attacks carried out by pirate action groups,” the group said.
Flotilla on patrol
A group of suspected pirates was captured Thursday after attacking a U.S. Navy frigate, the USS Nicholas, in the Indian Ocean, the group said.
The waters surrounding Somalia, including the Gulf of Aden that connects the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, are known to be among the world’s most dangerous. An international flotilla, including warships from the United States, the European Union, NATO, Japan and China, has been patrolling the area to protect the vital sea lane that links Asia to Europe.
But pirates have also shown an ability to strike farther afield, on the high seas.
The U.S. 5th Fleet, however, said Monday that the distance Somali pirates are willing to go to capture ships shows their desperation and is a sign of the success of multinational patrols.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Researchers Trace Data Theft to Intruders in China
www.nytimes.com/By JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID BARBOZA/2010/04/06
TORONTO — Turning the tables on a China-based computer espionage gang, Canadian and United States computer security researchers have monitored a spying operation for the past eight months, observing while the intruders pilfered classified and restricted documents from the highest levels of the Indian Defense Ministry.
In a report issued Monday night, the researchers, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, provide a detailed account of how a spy operation it called the Shadow Network systematically hacked into personal computers in government offices on several continents.
The Toronto spy hunters not only learned what kinds of material had been stolen, but were able to see some of the documents, including classified assessments about security in several Indian states, and confidential embassy documents about India’s relationships in West Africa, Russia and the Middle East. The intruders breached the systems of independent analysts, taking reports on several Indian missile systems. They also obtained a year’s worth of the Dalai Lama’s personal e-mail messages.
The intruders even stole documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, illustrating that even though the Indian government was the primary target of the attacks, one chink in computer security can leave many nations exposed.
“It’s not only that you’re only secure as the weakest link in your network,” said Rafal Rohozinski, a member of the Toronto team. “But in an interconnected world, you’re only as secure as the weakest link in the global chain of information.”
As recently as early March, the Indian communications minister, Sachin Pilot, told reporters that government networks had been attacked by China, but that “not one attempt has been successful.” But on March 24, the Toronto researchers said, they contacted intelligence officials in India and told them of the spy ring they had been tracking. They requested and were given instructions on how to dispose of the classified and restricted documents.
On Monday, Sitanshu Kar, a spokesman for the Indian Defense Ministry, said officials were “looking into” the report, but had no official statement.
The attacks look like the work of a criminal gang based in Sichuan Province, but as with all cyberattacks, it is easy to mask the true origin, the researchers said. Given the sophistication of the intruders and the targets of the operation, the researchers said, it is possible that the Chinese government approved of the spying.
When asked about the new report on Monday, a propaganda official in Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, said “it’s ridiculous” to suggest that the Chinese government might have played a role. “The Chinese government considers hacking a cancer to the whole society,” said the official, Ye Lao. Tensions have risen between China and the United States this year after a statement by Google in January that it and dozens of other companies had been the victims of computer intrusions coming from China.
The spy operation appears to be different from the Internet intruders identified by Google and from a surveillance ring known as Ghostnet, also believed to be operating from China, which the Canadian researchers identified in March of last year. Ghostnet used computer servers based largely on the island of Hainan to steal documents from the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, and governments and corporations in more than 103 countries.
The Ghostnet investigation led the researchers to this second Internet spy operation, which is the subject of their new report, titled “Shadows in the Cloud: An investigation Into Cyberespionage 2.0.” The new report shows that the India-focused spy ring made extensive use of Internet services like Twitter, Google Groups, Blogspot, blog.com, Baidu Blogs and Yahoo! Mail to automate the control of computers once they had been infected.
The Canadian researchers cooperated in their investigation with a v
olunteer group of security experts in the United States at the Shadowserver Foundation, which focuses on Internet criminal activity.
“This would definitely rank in the sophisticated range,” said Steven Adair, a security research with the group. “While we don’t know exactly who’s behind it, we know they selected their targets with great care.”
By gaining access to the control servers used by the second cyber gang, the researchers observed the theft of a wide range of material, including classified documents from the Indian government and reports taken from Indian military analysts and corporations, as well as documents from agencies of the United Nations and other governments.
“We snuck around behind the backs of the attackers and picked their pockets,” said Ronald J. Deibert, a political scientist who is director of the Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research group at the Munk School. “I’ve not seen anything remotely close to the depth and the sensitivity of the documents that we’ve recovered.”
The researchers said the second spy ring was more sophisticated and difficult to detect than the Ghostnet operation.
By examining a series of e-mail addresses, the investigators traced the attacks to hackers who appeared to be based in Chengdu, which is home to a large population from neighboring Tibet. Researchers believe that one hacker used the code name “lost33” and that he may have been affiliated with the city’s prestigious University of Electronic Science and Technology. The university publishes books on computer hacking and offers courses in “network attack and defense technology” and “information conflict technology,” according to its Web site.
The People’s Liberation Army also operates a technical reconnaissance bureau in the city, and helps finance the university’s research on computer network defense. A university spokesman could not be reached Monday because of a national holiday.
The investigators linked the account of another hacker to a Chengdu resident whose name appeared to be Mr. Li. Reached by telephone on Monday, Mr. Li denied taking part in computer hacking. Mr. Li, who declined to give his full name, said he must have been confused with someone else. He said he knew little about hacking. “That is not me,” he said. “I’m a wine seller.”
The Canadian researchers stressed that while the new spy ring focused primarily on India, there were clear international ramifications. Mr. Rohozinski noted that civilians working for NATO and the reconstruction mission in Afghanistan usually traveled through India and that Indian government computers that issued visas had been compromised in both Kandahar and Kabul in Afghanistan.
“That is an operations security issue for both NATO and the International Security Assistance Force,” said Mr. Rohozinski, who is also chief executive of the SecDev Group, a Canadian computer security consulting and research firm.
The report notes that documents the researchers recovered were found with “Secret,” “Restricted” and “Confidential” notices. “These documents,” the report says, “contain sensitive information taken from a member of the National Security Council Secretariat concerning secret assessments of India’s security situation in the states of Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, as well as concerning the Naxalites and Maoists,” two opposition groups.
Other documents included personal information about a member of the Indian Directorate General of Military Intelligence.
The researchers also found evidence that Indian Embassy computers in Kabul, Moscow and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and at the High Commission of India in Abuja, Nigeria had been compromised.
Also compromised were computers used by the Indian Military Engineer Services in Bengdubi, Calcutta, Bangalore and Jalandhar; the 21 Mountain Artillery Brigade in Assam and three air force bases. Computers at two Indian military colleges were also taken over by the spy ring.
Even after eight months of watching the spy ring, the Toronto researchers said they could not determine exactly who was using the Chengdu computers to infiltrate the Indian government.
“But an important question to be entertained is whether the P.R.C. will take action to shut the Shadow Network down,” the report says, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “Doing so will help to address longstanding concerns that malware ecosystems are actively cultivated, or at the very least tolerated, by governments like the P.R.C. who stand to benefit from their exploits though the black and gray markets for information and data.”
John Markoff reported from Toronto, and David Barboza from Shanghai. Vikas Bajaj contributed reporting from Mumbai, India.
BRASIL:
EN BREF, CE 06 avril 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,06/04/2010
