{jcomments on}OMAR, BXL, AGNEWS, le 17 juin 2010- HARARE — The European Union (EU) head of delegation to Zimbabwe Xavier Marchal on Wednesday said lack of progress in implementation of the country’s power-sharing deal was delaying full restoration of relations between Harare and Brussels.
BURUNDI :
Burundi Police Deny Attempt to Arrest Opposition Leader
Peter Clottey /www1.voanews.com/17 June 2010
An official of Burundi’s national police has dismissed as “rumor” reports that security agents want to arrest Agathon Rwasa, leader of the main opposition National Forces of Liberation (FNL) party.
Police spokesman Pierre Chanelle Ntarabaganyi said there is no reason to arrest the opposition leader.
“It is a rumor. There is no warrant to arrest him and there is no reason at all to arrest him (Rwasa),” he said.
But, Jean Bosco Habyarimana, spokesman of the FNL, said agents of the intelligence police in civilian clothes went to the opposition leader’s house, sealed it off and then attempted to enter it by force.
He also said that hundreds of FNL supporters surrounded the opposition leader’s house to prevent his arrest after hearing reports that the police were going to arrest him.
But, police spokesman Ntarabaganyi dismissed the arrest allegation.
“People started going to his dwelling just staying to protect him. And, the police went on the spot to see, to analyze the situation (but), right from there, they started to conclude that the police were trying to arrest him. But, it was quite a rumor and a rumor. But, we tried to negotiate with the people so that everyone can go home, but they didn’t hear us,” Ntarabaganyi said.
This comes a day after leaders of a coalition of opposition parties called on their supporters to boycott the 28th June presidential election.
The group, known as the Alliance of Democrats for Change, is demanding a re-run of the last local election after it claimed the vote was fraught with irregularities.
Leonard Nyangoma, a leading member of the group was quoted as saying
“we have told our militants not to go and cast their ballots for presidential elections because the communal ones held on May 24 were characterized by massive fraud and irregularities.”
Several opposition groups, including the FNL, pulled out of the upcoming presidential election after accusing the Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) of being biased towards incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza’s ruling CNDD-FDD party – a charge both the ruling party and CENI deny.
Meanwhile, police spokesman Ntarabaganyi said several FNL supporters were arrested after “they broke the law.”
EU deplores lack of competition in Burundi’s presidential elections due on June 28
June 17, 2010/english.peopledaily.com.cn/Source: Xinhua
European Union envoy to the Great Lakes Region Ambassador Roland Van De Geer has deplored the fact that one candidate only is going to contest the Burundian presidential elections due on June 28 this year.
In a press conference held in Bujumbura on Tuesday, Roland Van De Geer said it is a pity that there is only one candidate for the presidential elections. “The idea of an election is not to have only one candidate. It’s really a pity”, said the EU diplomat in a press conference.
Ambassador Roland Van De Geer also said the opposition should be allowed to participate to the campaign even though they are not taking part in the presidential competition.
“Our advice is to allow opposition parties to participate to the campaign and we have already communicated our concern to the National Electoral Commission,” said the EU envoy.
At a meeting held with governors of provinces in Bujumbura on June 2, Home Affairs Minister Edouard Nduwimana said opposition leaders who had pulled out of the presidential elections were not allowed to hold meetings with their militants.
Minister Nduwimana made the statement after five opposition candidates pulled out of the presidential elections on June 1.
On June 4, First Deputy-President Yves Sahinguvu announced his pullout of the competition, leaving alone outgoing Pierre Nkurunziza to run the presidential poll.
Burundi has entered a four-month electoral period.
After the May 24 communal elections whose results have been rejected by the opposition, the next one is the presidential election due on June 28, and will be followed by the election of deputies due on July 23. The fourth poll will be that of senators and is due on July 28 and the last one is the village-based election which will be held on September 7.
RWANDA
Not up for debate: Rwanda cannot excuse Peter Erlinder’s genocide denial
Rwanda is right to prosecute an American law professor who suggested 1994 killings not a genocide
By Patrick Karuretwa/www.hlrecord.org/ June 17, 2010
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA
On June 20, 1994, the BBC’s Marc Doyle sent a stern memo to his London-based editors. Writing from the streets of Rwanda, where defenseless men, women, and children were being slaughtered at the rate of 10,000 a day; the journalist cautioned that “It is a very serious misrepresentation of the situation in Rwanda to describe the killings simply as ‘the slaughter of civilians’ or ‘the mass killings,’ without explaining who is killing whom […T]he government militia and the government armed forces are responsible for the bodies being found in mass graves in Rwanda and floating in rivers.”
Doyle, who spent more time on the ground throughout the genocide than any other foreign reporter, recalls the frequent calls from London requesting that he submit “balanced reports”. “[Show] the other side!” he was told. The BBC editors maintained that whatever crimes the Hutu Interahamwe militia and the government army were committing were almost certainly replicated by their opponents, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF). The BBC were not the only ones uncomfortable with the idea that Rwanda’s tragedy could possibly be as unbalanced as was being reported. Other western media outlets took the same approach.
After all, this was Africa! The events in Rwanda could not be anything else than yet another eruption of irrational tribal or inter-ethnic violence. It had to be about “tribesmen killing each other for obscure reasons”, “inter-ethnic carnage”, “indiscriminate mass killings”, “various clans murdering others”, “the explosion of some ancient tribal hatred”, “gangs of youth settling tribal scores”, “incomprehensible savagery”, etc. Doyle recalls that every instance of exaction by individual RPF soldiers was reported and magnified with “undisguised glee” to demonstrate that the “other side” was just as evil.
The media attempts to establish a moral equivalency “between the two sides” was playing right in the hands of the genocidaires. From the beginning, the extremists had capitalized on an orchestrated confusion between two distinct wars, distinguished by Marc Doyle as the “shooting war” (easy to describe with two armies fiercely fighting each other in the North of the country), and the “genocide war” (in which a government was involved in the systematic annihilation of part of its own population).
16 years later, the “moral equivalency” fight is still on. It is tougher than ever. The crusaders’ ranks have swollen. Knowingly or not; human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, etc. are now working hands in hands with genocide suspects and nostalgics of the “Hutu Power” era based in the West. Their agenda has expanded; it now appears to include outright genocide denial.
The strange case of Peter Erlinder
“Can the tragedy that engulfed Rwanda properly be called ‘a genocide’ at all? Or, was it closer to a case of civilians being caught up in war-time violence, like the Eastern Front in WWII, rather than the planned behind-the-lines killings in Nazi death camps? The ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] judgment found the former.” – Peter Erlinder
One of the crusaders’ champions, Peter Erlinder, is finding out, at his own expense, that Rwandans have learned from their painful past. Rwandans will no longer cross their arms while their history is being distorted and their hardly-earned stability is jeopardized by unscrupulous individuals, however powerful. They know, from experience, that none of those individuals will stand by them when it’s time to reap the seeds of lies and division. They have not forgotten the sight of departing evacuation vehicles in which there was no space for Rwandans (only expatriates, their pets, and their belongings), the convoys that drove inexorably to safer havens amidst screams of agony and gunshots.
Erlinder, an American law professor at the William Mitchell College of Law who acted as a defense lawyer in the ICTR, is now being prosecuted for his controversial suggestion that the killings in Rwanda in 1994 not be termed a genocide at all. Under Rwanda’s anti-genocide law, individuals condemned for denying or grossly minimizing genocide, attempting to justify or approve genocide, or who destroy evidence related to it are liable to a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 20 in prison.
If the professor’s objective in uttering his statement was to achieve fame, he was certainly successful. The reaction in academic and legal circles in the U.S. was immediate. Lawyers, professors, human rights activists throughout the U.S. have made their views clear. Peter Erlinder’s prosecution by that “petty dictatorship”, as they call Rwanda, has nothing to do with the country’s laws, they said. It is pure political vendetta directed against an ICTR defense lawyer in the exercise of his functions. On this, they appear to be in notable disagreement with, of all people, Peter Erlinder, who wrote in one of his more inflammatory essays: “I have to disclose my own bias because, under the laws of Rwanda, I too am a criminal”.
The outraged intellectuals – who seem to suggest that the right to defend alleged genocide perpetrators entails the right to contend it never happened, and to propagate such views in Rwanda – are also in disagreement with Peter Erlinder’s employer. The ICTR, whose relationship with the Rwandan government has not been exactly smooth over the past decade, is, nonetheless, clear in this case: Peter Erlinder’s immunity as a defense lawyer at the international court does not apply to the accusations formulated against him in this case.
Peter Robinson, another American defense lawyer who has appeared before the ICTR, is currently paying the price for trying to force the tribunal’s hand into a blind endorsement of Erlinder’s cause. Judge Dennis Byron, the ICTR’s president, has ruled that Robinson and his colleague, Belgian/Congolese lawyer Nimy Mayidika Ngimbi, shall appear in court on June 21st for contempt of court under the Tribunal’s Rule 77. The defense lawyer, who refused to continue with an ongoing case unless “the UN court condemns and acts on the prosecution by Rwanda of their colleague” Erlinder, was also reported to his Bar Association in the U.S. for obstructing the ICTR’s proceedings.
Despite the risk of his arrest and prosecution, Erlinder, for whom the 1994 genocide against was nothing more than a “Clinton and Bush cover-up,” decided to go to Rwanda and defy the country’s justice system. The day before his arrival in Kigali, Erlinder was a panelist at a conference that gathered the who’s who of an increasingly visible international network of genocide deniers as well as known genocide suspects. He bid farewell to his audience and requested their support as he traveled to Rwanda to “show them” (meaning the Rwandan legal system). Immediately after the conference, one of his co-panelists, Eugene Rwamucyo, was arrested by the French police for his alleged participation in the planning and execution of the 1994 genocide. Clearly, Erlinder was not unaware of his potential criminal status un
der Rwandan law. His decision to travel to Rwanda was apparently based on the assumption that the small sub-Saharan country would never dare prosecuting a U.S. citizen, a prominent law professor, and a defense lawyer at the ICTR.
He was wrong. He failed to take into consideration the numerous instances when Rwanda’s leadership made it clear that, when it comes to its painful memories and hardly-earned stability, a clear line has been drawn. He failed to learn from other individuals and organizations that tried to cross that line before him. From the FLDR, a military organization comprising many Hutu leaders of the genocide based in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, to French Judge Jean-Louis Brugiere and his spurious accusations against Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who he accused of inciting a genocide against his own people so that he could ultimately take power, all are invariably confronted with the resolve of the Rwandan people, who have learned from their country’s painful history.
Whether the speech-related provisions of Rwanda’s anti-genocide laws are technically sound or not; whether they are intrinsically different from holocaust denial laws in Israel, Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Poland, Portugal, etc. is an open and highly subjective question. But one thing is certain: Rwanda is not ready to tolerate blatant genocide denial. As the government’s spokesperson stated, “if critics disagree with the Rwandan laws against the denial or defence of Genocide, we invite and welcome that debate […] but this needs to be understood; flagrant and orchestrated breaches of our genocide ideology laws will be met with the full force of the law.”
Looking to the future, remembering the past
“We understand that human rights activists schooled in the U.S. Bill of Rights may find this objectionable. But for Rwandans – schooled in the tragedy of the 1994 genocide and who long for peace – Mr. Erlinder’s arrest is an act of justice.” – Louise Mushikiwabo, Spokesperson of the Government of Rwanda
Many have tried and failed to accurately predict Rwanda’s post-genocide prospects. I could be mistaken too, but let me take a quick shot at reading into the country’s future in light of current events. There will be more Erlinders on Rwanda’s path to stability and prosperity, other “inspired” left-wingers using Rwanda in a bid to attack their own country will come up with some new conspiracy theories over the country’s troubled history. There will be further attempts by the FDLR and its sympathizers to weaken Rwanda’s still-fragile harmony. More “experts” and powerful organizations will find it shocking that their views and priorities are not adopted as the law of the land in such an unimportant country. These attention-seekers and would-be heroes will make news; they might also generate occasional doubt and confusion.
That is all they will achieve. They will not manage to derail a country that in less than two decades has moved from the verge of disintegration to becoming a regional model in areas as critical and wide-ranging as healthcare, anti-corruption, environmental policies, business climate, contribution to peacekeeping, women empowerment, access to education, etc. All they will achieve is to make Rwandans – and, indeed, all Africans – stronger, wiser, and more assertive in their claim for fairness and respect.
In fact, cases such as Rwanda’s could eventually be a blessing in disguise for the Western world, which Chatham House, a leading think-thank, recently called “out of touch” when it comes to Africa’s current realities. Hopefully, more “experts” and policy-makers may appreciate – and it’s about time they do – that even poor sub-Saharan countries should be approached with deliberation and respect. Just like citizens of wealthier countries, the people of such nations expect and deserve to be treated as equal partners rather than humanitarian cases.
Rwanda’s most significant achievement over the last 16 years may not be its spectacular socio-economic recovery. The country’s true success may be a less tangible one. Careful – and reasonably humble – observers have seen, in recent years, a resilient people regaining nothing less than its soul. Day after day, they have watched Rwandans moving, through trial and error, from a state of despair to a “Yes We Can!” mind-set. Rwandans deserve support; they need genuine advice and criticism. However, as it should be clear by now, they will resist those who insist on dragging them back to what they see as “their rightful position”.
Patrick Karuretwa is a Rwandan lawyer studying at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy as its first ever LL.M./M.A.L.D. joint degree candidate.
UGANDA
TANZANIA:
CONGO RDC :
Top UN envoy bids farewell to first batch of blue helmets leaving DR Congo
www.un.org/17 June 2010
– The top United Nations envoy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) today paid tribute to a group of Senegalese blue helmets who are the first batch of peacekeepers to leave the country in line with the recent decision by the Security Council to alter the UN mission there.
The Council last month agreed to transform the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC (MONUC) into a stabilization mission in the coming weeks, authorizing the withdrawal of up to 2,000 UN military personnel – from an existing strength of 19,815 – by 30 June from areas where security has improved enough to allow their removal.
It also authorized the new operation, which will be known as the UN Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO), to stay in the country until 30 June 2011.
At a ceremony held in Kisangani in North Kivu province, Alan Doss, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative and head of MONUC, lauded the Senegalese troops for their professionalism and courage, as well as their flexibility to deploy wherever the mission requires.
He also paid tribute to those Senegalese peacekeepers who lost their lives in the DRC since April 2001, when the country first deployed troops to the UN operation.
“This ceremony is a historic moment in the evolution of the United Nations mission in Congo,” Mr. Doss said, noting that it marks the first phase of the reduction of forces as stipulated by the Council.
“However, the work is not finished,” he stated, pledging that the new operation will continue to carry out the vital task of protecting civilians in the country.
Mr. Doss, who is finishing his term as the top UN envoy in DRC at the end of this month, added that any decision to further reduce troop levels by the Security Council will be done in consultation with the Congolese Government and based on assessments of the security situation in sensitive areas.
KENYA :
Kenya Given $9.3 Million To Prosecute Pirates
By Marco ‘t Hoen/Epoch Times Staff / Jun 17, 2010
Kenya and Seychelles will receive $9.3 million in donations to improve their criminal justice system to help them prosecute suspected Somali pirates.
According to AP Cole, head of U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s counterpiracy program in East Africa said on Tuesday the funds will cover costs for the next 18 months to upgrade courts and prisons, better equip police and prosecutors, and fly in witnesses for piracy trials.
Kenya holds in custody 123 suspects of piracy, captured in the neighboring Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden, where many vessels have been hijacked by Somali pirates.
International naval forces patrolling the area have delivered many captured pirates to Kenya, heavily burdening its poorly equipped and corrupt criminal justice system. At the beginning of 2010, Kenya stopped taking on new cases until the European Union gave assurance in May.
Suspects have been convicted and sentenced in Kenya, Cole said. Besides the European Union, donations to aid the prosecution of suspected pirates come from Australia, the United States, and Canada.
Ten countries hold in total 540 Somalis suspected of piracy, Cole said.
ANGOLA :
Cobalt Promotes VP Wilkirson To CFO As Gray Departs
online.wsj.com/JUNE 17, 2010
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
Cobalt International Energy Inc. (CIE) said its chief financial officer was stepping down to spend more time with his family, as the oil-and-gas explorer promoted one of its vice presidents to the post.
The news comes at a tumultuous time for Cobalt, which mainly focuses on the deepwater U.S. Gulf of Mexico and offshore Angola and Gabon. With a moratorium on deepwater Gulf drilling in effect for at least six months because of a massive oil leak there, the company earlier this month said it would incur $15 million in expenditures because of a force majeure on drill-rig operations.
The company went public late last year and has yet to produce revenue. In May, it reported a wider loss for the first quarter because of costs and write-downs related to an unsuccessful well.
Wednesday, Cobalt said it was promoting a strategic-planning and investor-relations executive, John P. Wilkirson, to replace the departing CFO Rodney L. Gray. Wilkirson has been at Cobalt for three years, working for Unocal Corp. (UCL) before that.
Cobalt shares were up 0.4% at $8.03 after hours. The stock has lost 42% of its value this year through the close Wednesday, while the broader market is roughly flat.
-By Joan E. Solsman, Dow Jones Newswires; joan.solsman@dowjones.com
BP details plan for $20 billion claim fund for oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico
By Steven Mufson/Washington Post Staff Writer /Thursday, June 17, 2010
How many companies could take a $20 billion body blow and still be left standing?
Not many. The amount of money BP said it would plunk into an escrow fund for oil-spill claims is enough to cover the entire NASA budget for a year. It’s enough to buy all the shares of the Kellogg Co. And it’s larger than the annual economic output of 90 countries.
But BP is an unusual company. It made profits of $5.6 billion in the first quarter of this year and $14 billion in 2009. It produces about 2.5 million barrels a day of crude oil from Russia to Angola, from Britain’s North Sea to Alaska’s North Slope. Until Wednesday, BP also had been planning to pay out $10.5 billion in dividends this year, which would still have left it with $5 billion to $10 billion in spare cash.
It could raise the money for the escrow fund this year without borrowing another dime.
That arsenal of cash and crude hasn’t been enough to placate the Obama administration, however, as the company wades through the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. And BP has struggled to convince markets that it can meet its obligations to both investors and victims of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. In eight weeks, BP stock has fallen to about half its earlier value. On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings slashed the firm’s credit rating to BBB, two rungs above junk. And early on Wednesday morning, investors in credit default swaps — an insurance-like financial instrument — were pricing an almost 40 percent chance the oil giant would default on its debts within five years.
So although the deal struck at the White House on Wednesday was designed in part to reassure Gulf Coast residents that BP would put aside enough money for their claims, it was also designed to give shareholders a sense that the financial damage was manageable and could, over time, be contained along with the oil spill.
That’s why one thing BP asked in exchange for the big escrow fund was a signal from President Obama that he was not trying to run the firm out of business. “BP is a strong and viable company,” the president said after his meeting with BP’s chairman and top executives, “and it is in all of our interests that it remain so.”
That is hard to accept for many Americans who want to punish BP. But anything else might be counterproductive. So far, the company, drawing on its worldwide operations, has paid for everything from National Guard troops to air quality testing by the Environmental Protection Agency, from $5,000 checks for shrimpers to the $100 million or so for each relief well.
“This agreement underscores that as long as we need oil, Big Petroleum is better than Bankrupt Petroleum,” Lincoln Mayer, a lawyer specializing in energy and antitrust at McDermott Will & Emery, said in an e-mail. “Few companies could afford a $20 billion mistake. BP is one of them, and that’s a good thing.”
Investment analysts appeared reassured after the White House meeting. “It takes the political heat off the company and it steadies the ship in rough waters,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer. “BP is stabilizing its financial position so it can handle cleanup costs and damages.” BP stock rose 1.4 percent on Wednesday, closing at $31.85 a share. And the cost of BP credit default swaps dipped slightly, indicating a bit less anxiety about corporate default.
So how does a company come up with $20 billion?
BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, said the firm will suspend its dividend for three quarters, starting with the payment that had been scheduled for Monday. That will give it $7.8 billion in cash.
The company also said it will sell about $7 billion worth of assets, a fraction of its total and less than what it agreed to pay for Devon Energy assets earlier this year.
The company’s chief financial officer, Byron Grote, said that BP will trim its capital spending plans by about 10 percent this year and next, saving an additional $2 billion in 2010 and $2 billion or so in 2011.
The company still expects to generate $5 billion or more a year in extra cash from operations.
Moreover, the deal with the White House lets BP spread out its payments to the fund. The biggest chunks will come up front: $3 billion in the third quarter, $2 billion in the fourth quarter and then $1.25 billion a quarter until the full amount is paid in three years. To provide a guarantee that it will make those payments, the company said it is “setting aside” $20 billion of U.S. assets; as it makes payments, those assets will be freed up. BP will continue to earn money on those assets, but the government will effectively have a lien on them.
The escrow fund leaves many uncertainties. A BP official said “it’s not a ceiling and it’s not a floor.” Fines and penalties won’t be covered by the fund. Many plaintiffs will continue to pursue lawsuits separately.
But, Gheit said, “we think BP has the financial flexibility to survive this crisis.” If any money is left over, it will be returned to BP.
BP’s Grote said the plan should “give more comfort to those on Gulf Coast of the United States, give more comfort to government, and we hope it will give more comfort to our shareholders.” He said that although the company is financially strong, “we think it’s important to take a deeply conservative fiscal approach to running our business at this time.” And he said he hopes shareholders who will not be receiving their dividends will understand that “it’s an extraordinary thing for the company to do, but this is an extraordinary situation we find ourselves in.”
ANGOLA MAKING STEADY PROGRESS TOWARDS MEETING DEVELOPMENT GOALS – UNICEF
accra-mail.com/17 June
Aggregate | Africa
15 June – Angola has made considerable strides in achieving more than half of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), including those on malnutrition and child health, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) announced today.
The finding is based on preliminary data from the first nationwide survey to collect development indicators since the end of Angola’s long-running civil war.
UNICEF and the country jointly conducted the first-ever Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), which found that progress has been made in five of the eight MDGs: malnutrition; education; gender balance; child survival and malaria; and HIV/AIDS.
Malnutrition has dropped from 35 to 23 per cent, while school enrolment has surged to 76 per cent.
Gender parity is close to being achieved in schools, with 98 girls for every 100 boys attending classes.
Meanwhile, child survival has been on the upswing, improving by nearly 20 per cent, while the proportion of child death due to malaria has fallen to 23 per cent.
Koen Vanormelingen, UNICEF’s Representative in Angola, told reporters today in Geneva that these improvements are due to the consistent economic growth that the country has experienced since 2002. Also accelerating progress towards reaching the MDGs, which have a 2015 deadline, are the Government’s rehabilitation and revitalization efforts, with 30 per cent of the State budget being earmarked for the social sector.
But he pointed to some setbacks, especially in maternal mortality, which has not seen the same level of improve as other areas, mainly because skilled attendance at birth continues to hover just below 48 per cent.
Also, despite improvements in schools, only 35 per cent of Angolan children finish primary school on time, and there is still a backlog of people who had not been able to receive educations during the 27-year war, which ended in 2002.
Mr. Vanormelingen also noted that the water and sanitation sector has experienced a step backward, with only 42 per cent of people having access to safe and drinkable water and 60 per cent to basic sanitation.
Combined with continued poverty and disparity, this could jeopardize the gains made in child survival and development, he cautioned.
One of the key reasons holding Angola which ranks 143rd out of 158 nations in the 2009 Human Development Report of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) back from stepped-up success in achieving the MDGs, he said, is the fact that nearly 90 per cent of Angolans live in slums.
The country, the UNICEF official said, has completed the relatively easier task of rebuilding institutions and infrastructures, but now must tackle the challenge of improving its human capital.
He stressed that, as agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Angolan Government should continue its high level of investment in the social sector, but also enhance resource allocation to reduce poverty and in bolstering young people’s skills.
During Angola’s civil war between the Government, backed by Cuban troops, and rebels led by Jonas Savimbi and supported by South African forces, the UN sent three separate verification missions, beginning in 1989, to help implement various efforts to end the conflict.
The first two successfully monitored the withdrawal of Cuban troops and oversaw a multilateral ceasefire. The third, sent after renewed fighting, sought to help the parties restore peace and achieve national reconciliation, but was faced with continued conflict.
The fourth and final peacekeeping mission was withdrawn in 1999 following the collapse of the peace process and the shooting down of two UN aircraft.
SOUTH AFRICA:
The memories come flooding in
June 17, 2010/ By Chris Jones /Special to ESPN.com
(Archive)
SOWETO, South Africa — The crowds had gathered near the Hector Pieterson Memorial, and a group of schoolboys stood together on the street, in their iron-crisp uniforms, singing at the top of their lungs. Through our open van windows, it sounded like a song of celebration, a joyous song. But our driver, a 45-year-old former soldier named Jan, felt the hair on his arms go up. He had not been back to Soweto since his military service ended in 1994, when the apartheid regime fell and the soldiers were told to go home. Now that song brought him back to the freedom riots here, the burning tires and the bricks. The memories came flooding in.
“I’ve had two or three thousand people standing in the street in front of me, singing that song in my face,” he said. “I don’t like this place.”
He decided to stay in the van. “I will get my Sudoku book and remember my time in Soweto,” he said with a wink. He was smiling when he said it, but there was no moving Jan from the van. It was enough for him to have driven here.
Wednesday is Youth Day in South Africa, a commemoration of a terrible day in South African history: June 16, 1976. On that day, 15,000 schoolchildren gathered in Soweto, set to march in protest of their mandatory schooling in Afrikaans, the language of the white minority who had confined them to their townships. Soweto was the biggest township, and it was fertile ground for black resistance. Before he was sent to prison, Nelson Mandela lived down the street from the schools, and so did Desmond Tutu. The schoolchildren knew who their fathers were.
They marched, and the police opened fire. More than 20 schoolchildren were killed. Among them was Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old boy who was shot near the corners of Vilakazi and Moema Streets. Before he died, he was carried away by another boy, named Mbuyisa Makhubu; behind him, Hector’s sister, Antoinette, gave chase. A photograph of the fate-struck trio circulated around the world. In South Africa, the death of Hector Pieterson is remembered as the beginning of the end of apartheid. That photograph awakened the rest of the world to what was happening here.
At the memorial, there is a large carved stone. It’s in memory of Hector Pieterson “and all other young heroes and heroines of our struggle who laid down their lives for freedom, peace, and democracy.”
Today, hundreds of people gathered around it, laying flowers and wreaths in front of it and sprinkling rose petals on top of it. Many of the people who came were children. They had dressed in their school uniforms — in their dress pants and pleated skirts, their shirts and blazers and carefully knotted ties. They were dressed the way Hector Pieterson was dressed that morning 34 years ago.
A giant reproduction of the photograph was nearby. There was Hector, a trickle of blood coming out of his mouth. His shoes had come off, and he was wearing his little wool shorts and a schoolboy’s sweater. Mbuyisa is wearing overalls, his face a combination of shock and determination. Antoinette has her hand raised, her own face already frozen with grief. In the photograph, Hector is not dead yet, but he is dying. It is almost over.
It’s a photograph that’s impossible to forget, and that’s the miracle of South Africa. Despite such an immediate history, despite so many divisions even within the whites and the blacks, let alone between them, this country remains one country.
“It’s amazing that there was no war,” Jan said on the drive to Soweto. Under apartheid, to keep the system in place, military service was compulsory: two years of full service, followed by 10 years in “camps,” the U.S. equivalent of the reserves. Prison was the other option. By accident of birth, Jan’s opening two-year stint coincided with the riots that rocked Soweto throughout the mid-1980s. He graduated from high school and was put into the back of a Samil 100 and sent into the middle of an uprising.
He can remember that first day, the bottom dropping out of his stomach. “I can remember being in the back of that truck, staring at my R1 rifle,” he said. The riots weren’t daily. There were quiet stretches. But then a fire would be lit, and the bricks would start raining down.
“All of a sudden, it would just hit you,” Jan said. “They didn’t know of booby traps. They knew of stones. They knew of bottles. They knew of fire bombs.”
Jan and his fellow soldiers were cycled in and out of Soweto. They would live in a base here and then be sent to Cape Town or somewhere in the bush to settle their nerves, and then they would be sent back in. For eight years after his full-time service, Jan would take a 30-day leave from his job as a policeman and become a soldier in Soweto once again.
Then, one day in 1994, the telephone rang at the base. It was a woman, Jan remembers, from somewhere on high. She said she had good news and bad news. The good news was that Jan’s military service was over, two years ahead of schedule. The bad news was, he wasn’t going to get paid for the time he’d just done.
What was that day like?
Jan smiled and looked out the window at the pitted streets and the tuck shops and cars. “It was a lovely day,” he said, and that was all that he said.
This morning was a lovely morning. The sky was blue. The schoolchildren gathered around the memorial and sang their songs. Inside the nearby museum, they looked at more photographs and read accounts of a time that seems almost impossible now. Today, Soweto is still black, but it’s not a hotbed of dissent anymore. It’s a suburb, with tidy brick bungalows and tree-lined streets. Nelson Mandela’s house has been renovated and turned into a museum; vendors outside sell T-shirts with his face on them and World Cup scarves.
Jan asked what it was like out there, out on the streets he used to patrol, but he would not get out of the van to see for himself. Maybe one day he will, but not today; today was just his first step. It was part of a process. Sixteen years is a long time in some ways; in other ways, it’s not much time at all.
He has changed like the neighborhood — a miraculous transformation, a South African transformation. He didn’t flee like so many of his fellow soldiers, choosing Australia or Canada over the threat of reprisals. (“If I live, I’ll put out the lights,” he told them.) He didn’t flinch when suddenly his boss was black. His 18-year-old daughter knows nothing of apartheid, apart from what she reads in her history books. “Today, the blacks go and braai with us. They go and fish with us,” Jan said.
But none of that has changed his memories of this place. It doesn’t change the fact that certain songs can still stand his hair on its end. Most days, people forget. But today, people remembered, and they aren’t good memories. A happy ending doesn’t change the middle.
Inside the museum, granite bricks have been scattered across a field of gravel. There are hundreds of them, each bearing the name of a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, who had died sometime on these streets.
Ellen Makulusa.
Eric Ngcobo.
Samuel Ntuli.
Zaliswa Tiyo.
Christopher Gobile.
Mandy Yuba.
Hector Pieterson.
And parked outside, a former soldier named Jan sat in his van, working on a Sudoku puzzle. Soweto unfolded around him, in the dips of the Klipspruit Valley. The landmark cooling towers rose in the distance. Men walked between the cars, selling drums and wooden giraffes. A primary school named for Mbuyisa Makhubu was quiet for the holiday. The schoolchildren ran by, kicking a ball, laughing and smiling into the sun.
“That was 10 years of my life,” Jan said. “For what?”
Chris Jones is a contributing editor to ESPN The Magazine and a writer-at-large for Esquire.
AFRICA / AU :
Darfur rebel commanders to face war crime charges Thursday
Pana/ 17/06/2010
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Two Darfur rebel leaders, suspected to have organized attacks against African Union (AU) peacekeepers, surrendered to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, Netherlands, and would appear in court Thursday to face war crime charges.
An ICC statement issued Wednesday said the two suspects, Abdallah Banda Nourain and Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus, surrendered after a secret arrest warrant was issued against them in August, 2007, for war crimes.
They would answer to charges on Thursday.
They would be charged with the killing, in Darfur, of 12 AU soldiers, following a deadly armed raid at their camp in Haskanita, North Darfur, which constitutes war crimes.
Banda is suspected of commanding the rebel forces that invaded an AU military camp on 29 September, 2007, in one of the worst attacks against African peacekeepers.
The African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS) was deployed to quell the fighting in Darfur and offer civilian protection when they were attacked.
The ICC charge sheet states that Banda led a group of 1,000 fighters from a breakaway group of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) to raid the AMIS military camp.
They were armed with deadly artillery, including anti-aircraft guns, artillery guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, which they used to launch attacks against the AMIS, killing 12 soldiers and wounding eight others.
The second suspect, Jerbo, is also jointly charged with leading a breakaway faction of the Sudanese Liberation Army-Unity (SLA-Unity) to the raid.
An ICC Pre-Trial Chamber said ‘there is reasonable suspicion’ that the attack against the African peacekeepers occurred during an armed conflict of a non-international nature.
The Presiding Judge, Sylvia Steiner of Brazil, Judge Sanji Mmasenono Monageng of Botswana and Judge Cuno Tarfusser of Italy, have considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Banda and Jerbo are criminally responsible for war crimes.
The charges include violence to life, in the form of murder, whether committed or attempted, intentionally directing attacks against personnel, installations, material, units or vehicles involved in a peacekeeping mission and pillaging.
The judges held that, on the basis of information provided by the Office of the Prosecutor, a summons to appear for Banda and Jerbo would be sufficient to ensure their appearance before the court, the court said.
Addis Ababa –
Anglo, BHP, Lonmin and Northam: South African Equity Preview
June 17, 2010/By Carli Lourens and Ron Derby/Bloomberg
June 17 (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.
South Africa’s FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index rose 236.63, or 0.9 percent, to 27,682.72.
Alexander Forbes Ltd. (AFB SJ): Africa’s biggest independent retirement-fund administrator said its net loss narrowed to 129 million rand ($16.9 million) in the year through March from 464 million rand a year earlier.
Anglo American Plc. (AGL SJ): The company, which operates 10 mines in Australia, closed bids for five coal assets for sale in New South Wales and Queensland states. Shares in Anglo rose 3.97 rand, or 1.3 percent, to 303.76 rand.
BHP Billiton Ltd. (BIL SJ): The world’s largest mining company agreed with Japanese steelmakers on iron-ore prices of around $147 a metric ton for the July-to-September period, Nikkei English News reported, without saying where it got the information. The stock rose 43 cents, or 0.2 percent, to 217.38 rand.
Lonmin Plc (LON SJ): The world’s third-largest platinum producer was downgraded to “underweight” from “neutral” at JPMorgan. The shares rallied 1.39 rand, or 0.8 percent, to 184.99 rand.
Northam Platinum Ltd. (NHM SJ): The operator of the world’s deepest platinum mine revised the design of its planned Booysendal project, lifting the cost of building it by 16 percent to 3.6 billion rand ($473 million). The stock gained 20 cents, or 0.4 percent, to 45.89 rand.
Shares or American depositary receipts of the following South African companies closed as follows:
Anglo American Plc (AAUKY US) fell 0.8 percent to $19.87. AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (AU US) rose 0.2 percent to $43.66. BHP Billiton Plc (BBL US) fell 0.7 percent to $57.06. DRDGold Ltd. (DROOY US) fell 1.3 percent to $4.36. Gold Fields Ltd. (GFI US) rose 0.3 percent to $13.78. Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY US) decreased 0.1 percent to $9.91. Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (IMPUY US) fell 0.6 percent to $25.70. Sappi Ltd. (SPP US) rose 0.3 percent to $4.04. Sasol Ltd. (SSL US) fell 0.8 percent to $37.82.
–Editors: Alastair Reed, Paul Richardson.
Sudan: Readout of the National Security Advisor’s White House Meeting with AU Panel
17 June 2010/The White House (Washington, DC) /allafrica.com
document
Washington, DC — From Benjamin Chang, spokesman for the National Security Council:
Earlier today, National Security Advisor General James L. Jones welcomed Thabo Mbeki, the Chairman of the African Union (AU) High Level Implementation Panel for Sudan and former South African President, Haile Menkerios, United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General for Sudan, and other distinguished members of the AU High Level Panel to the White House to discuss Sudan. During the meeting, President Obama stopped by to underscore the United States’ commitment to working closely with the AU and the UN on the timely implementation of Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement and to a just and lasting peace in Darfur.
General Jones and the delegation discussed preparations for the referendum on southern self-determination in January 2011 and concrete ways to address growing insecurity in Darfur. General Jones commended the AU and UN for their leadership, and he and the delegation agreed on the importance of sustained international engagement on these issues.
This meeting builds on Vice President Biden’s trip to the region last week and underscores our collective commitment and that of others in the international community to coordinate our efforts regarding Sudan. Prior to its meeting at the White House, the AU/UN delegation met with Secretary of State Clinton.
UN /ONU :
UN may put forward int’l flotilla probe
By HERB KEINON AND JORDANA HORN IN NEW YORK / www.jpost.com/06/17/2010
Ban proposes investigation despite establishment of Terkel Committee.
Talkbacks (4)
Israel responded coolly Wednesday to indications that despite the establishment of the Terkel Committee to investigate the Gaza flotilla, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was still considering the establishment of an international panel to look into the May 31 IDF raid.
Ban’s office proposed the idea at a closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council on Tuesday, and a spokesperson in his office said the office was currently involved in talks to determine the potential leadership of such a commission.
Both Israel and Turkey would be encouraged to actively participate in the panel, representatives of Ban’s office said Wednesday.
“The secretary-general is in discussions with different parties to see whether an inquiry with credible international involvement can be accepted by all,” the spokesperson said.
A senior Israeli official noted that Ban did not make any recommendation, but that this was only a “proposal.”
“Israel believes that our investigations meet the highest international standards of impartiality, comprehensiveness, transparency and professionalism,” the official said.
Israel currently has three independent investigations into the incident – an IDF inquiry headed by Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland; the Terkel Committee that was established on Monday; and a state comptroller investigation.
UN envoy: Ban still looking into probe idea
On Tuesday, Robert Serry, the UN’s special envoy to the Middle East, said that Ban was still looking into the idea of a UN investigation.
“The Secretary-General has taken note of Israel’s announcement and recognizes that a thorough Israeli investigation is important, and could be consistent with the Secretary-General’s own proposals for an international panel – the two combined would fully meet the international community’s expectation for a credible and impartial investigation,” he said, in a statement.
“The Secretary-General’s proposal is not incompatible with domestic inquiries, in fact, the two approaches are complementary, so his proposal, accordingly, remains on the table,” he said.
Serry also told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that Israel has agreed to release the cargo from the boats barred from reaching Gaza to UN “on the understanding that it is for the United Nations to determine its appropriate humanitarian use in Gaza.”
Israel had previously attempted to convey the 70 truckloads of confiscated goods to Gaza, but Hamas had refused to allow them in.
Security cabinet meets on Gaza blockade
Meanwhile, the security cabinet met Wednesday to discuss easing restrictions on what is allowed into Gaza. It is expected to finish the discussion on Thursday with an agreement to draw up a list of goods prohibited from entering Gaza, rather than a list of good permitted into the area, and to agree that construction material can be allowed in for earmarked projects if mechanisms are in place to ensure that they are not diverted to Hamas’s use.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, at odds over government coordination during the flotilla episode, clashed in the meeting over Barak’s suggestion that Israel deflect the world’s criticism over the flotilla incident by launching a far-reaching diplomatic initiative.
Such a move, he argued, would also make it easier for the US to help Israel out of its isolation.
Ya’alon said it was clear that Barak would push to relieve Israel’s international isolation by coming up with a widespread diplomatic initiative.
Ya’alon has made clear in recent days that he is against Israel making diplomatic concessions because of the difficult straits the country finds itself in now because of the flotilla incident.
Terkel Committee meetings to be held in Hebrew
The Terkel Committee held an organization session on Wednesday, where it was decided that the committee’s hearings will be held in Hebrew, with simultaneous translation for the two international observers, David Trimble and Ken Watkin. Neither man has yet arrived in the country.
It was also agreed that the committee’s hearings would begin as soon as possible, and that a spokesman for the committee would be appointed in a matter of days.
Amnesty disappointed with probe decision
Amnesty International responded with disappointment to the cabinet’s appointment of a committee to investigate the Gaza flotilla affair.
“The structure of the governmentappointed committee brings disappointment.
This was a missed opportunity,” said Malcolm Smart, the head of the Middle East and North Africa division of Amnesty International.
Smart criticized the Israeli flotilla probe committee on the grounds that it lacked sufficient independence from the government to reach meaningful conclusions and that the findings of the committee would be unusable for future legal actions.
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.
FUNDING SHORTAGE FORCES UN AIR SERVICE TO HALT AID FLIGHTS IN WEST AFRICA
accra-mail.com/17 June
Aggregate | Africa
15 June – A lack of funding has forced the United Nations food aid agency to suspend humanitarian flights to three West African countries from tomorrow, the agency reported today.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP), which manages the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), said flights to Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia will be halted because it has been unable to raise the $2.5
million required to continue operating until the end of this year.
The West African coastal service of UNHAS had been serving about 500 humanitarian passengers per month people working for non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies, donor representatives and journalists benefiting an estimated 250,000 people in some of the least accessible parts of the three countries, WFP spokesperson Emilia Casella told reporters in Geneva.
The flights were necessary for safety reasons and also helped relief agencies save time and resources.
In 2003, WFP was given the responsibility of providing safe, reliable and cost-efficient air transport for all UN agencies involved in relief operations. That responsibility led to the founding of UNHAS. Working on behalf of the humanitarian community, UNHAS operated 48,000 hours in 2008, transporting 361,000 passengers and 15,200 metric tons of cargo globally.
The WFP aviation unit does not directly own or operate the aircraft. Instead, it provides air services by chartering aircraft to meet the needs of emergency and humanitarian support for UN agencies and other cooperating partners. UNHAS operates in some 16 countries.
UN Security Council Moves Toward Sanctioning Groups that Recruit Child Soldiers
Margaret Besheer | United Nations/www1.voanews.com/ 17 June 2010
The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday opened the door to sanctioning groups that recruit child soldiers and commit other atrocities against minors, such as sexual violence and torture.
The 15-member council adopted a presidential statement expressing its “readiness” to impose sanctions against persistent perpetrators of crimes against children in situations of armed conflict.
The council strongly condemned all violations against children and paved the way to build on a resolution adopted last year that makes sexual violence against children, and the killing and maiming of children illegal under international law.
The all-day session had the participation of more than 60 countries and one former child soldier.
Manju Gurung is 18 years old. But when she was 13, Maoist forces in her native Nepal forcibly recruited her into their ranks where she remained under bleak and difficult conditions for the next two years. She told the Security Council that at first she was trained to dig ditches and carry heavy rocks to build roads. At 14, she was taught to use guns and be a guerilla fighter. “Many of my friends had died fighting and many had become disabled while fighting. Most of us were weak. During the war, at times, we wouldn’t be able to eat for an entire week. Sometimes we would survive on water and corn flour,” she said.
One day in May 2007, after the peace agreement was signed, Manju summoned her courage and slipped away from the camp and her commanders. But as is the case for many former child soldiers, reintegration into her community was difficult. “In the village, everyone continued to show suspicion toward me and to talk behind my back. My parents could no longer send me to school, and I had to leave. I went to the nearest city where I worked as a house maid,” she said.
Eventually, with help from the United Nations and aid groups, she rejoined her family in their village where she is continuing her education.
U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Radhika Coomaraswamy said that because of the U.N.’s intervention, the Maoist party in Nepal has released almost 3,000 children. She reported some success as well with armed groups in the Philippines and Sudan.
But the violations still outnumber the success stories. A report from the U.N. Secretary-General lists dozens of parties — mostly rebel groups in Africa, Asia and Latin America — that commit some of the most heinous crimes against children. The penalty for those crimes could soon be higher.
Dessert: No jobs, no money, no hope — now no soccer
Submitted by SHNS/www.scrippsnews.com/By DALE McFEATTERS, Scripps Howard News Service/ 06/17/2010
Here’s another reason Americans should embrace soccer: Anti-Western and anti-U.S. Islamic radicals are threatening to kill anybody caught watching the World Cup, a special point of pride in Africa because it’s the first time the continent has hosted the games.
An organization calling itself al-Shabaab, apparently deciding that the hapless people of the violent and chaotic failed nation of Somalia aren’t miserable enough, has decreed that both playing soccer and watching it on TV are un-Islamic.
Several dozen people have already been jailed for the crime of watching the World Cup in their own homes in areas controlled by al-Shabaab and an allied organization, Hisbul Islam. In 2006, Islamic gunmen killed a man and a teenage girl for refusing to turn off a Germany-Italy Cup match.
In areas of the capital, Mogadishu, controlled by the government, people are free — or as free as anyone gets in Somalia — to watch the World Cup. The soccer-crazy Somalians have been buying up satellite dishes and power boosters and hiring shade-tree electricians to hook them up for the games. One Somali channel broadcasts the matches from the safety of the airport, which is held by African Union peacekeepers. And several Arab channels, taking pity on the soccer-deprived Somalis, are beaming the games into the country.
One cinema in the government-controlled part of the capital carries the World Cup to packed houses along with its Hollywood and Bollywood movies from 10 a.m. to midnight. If al-Shabaab should lay hands on the rest of the capital, the Dhamuke Cinema is probably not long for the world because, in addition to outlawing soccer, the radicals also outlawed movies. It’s a ban they enforced in their own areas by rolling hand grenades into theater audiences. Oh, and the Dhamuke Cinema commits one other unspeakable sin — it allows men and women to sit together.
Al-Shabaab’s leaders say they banned soccer and especially the World Cup because they distracted its young male adherents from the task of jihad. Others say the problem was that rather than going off to the front to fight government forces, the youngsters were sneaking off to watch the games.
But al-Shabaab, with its obsessive interest in other people’s martyrdom, is one of those joyless organizations that ban lots of things — music, dancing, mustaches, school bells (too much like church bells), coeducation, large social gatherings. In the town of Merca, the local al-Shabaab decided that gold and silver dental fillings were un-Islamically decorative and went around yanking out teeth. Al-Shabaab gunmen also go around whipping women they suspect of wearing a bra, bras being un-Islamic because they are “deceptive.”
If there were such a thing as a free and honest vote in Somalia, the unpopular al-Shabaab would be gone tomorrow, but they have what counts — AK-47s. But it’s unsettling and a little sad that the uneducated and unworldly men who run al-Shabaab feel that their religion is threatened by the simple act of running around a field kicking a ball.
(Reach Dale McFeatters at dmcfeatters(at)shns.com
JUST DESSERT
N.Korea reportedly uses workers in Africa as fans
(AFP) /17062010
SEOUL — North Korea’s tiny fan club at the World Cup in South Africa is made up of citizens already working in Africa on construction projects, a report said Thursday.
A group of 50 red-clad supporters cheered on their team as it went down 2-1 to Brazil Tuesday in Johannesburg after a dogged defence. They claimed they were part of a group of 300 fans who had travelled from Pyongyang.
But Daily NK, a Seoul-based online newspaper run by defectors, said the impoverished North had mobilised workers already in African countries to cheer on the side’s first World Cup finals appearance since 1966.
It said they were either from a state company involved in overseas construction projects or from the Mansudae Art Institute, which produces statues and other works of art in Namibia, Angola and other African countries.
Mostly recently the institute built a 164-feet (50-metre), 27-million-dollar monument called “African Renaissance” unveiled in April in Dakar, Senegal.
Daily NK quoted a source in China as saying: “North Korea planned to send a large cheering group from Pyongyang, but it was cancelled due to problems of cost and difficulties regulating them on site.”
Pyongyang’s attempt to sell 65 free tickets, allocated by FIFA for each of its games, through overseas offices also failed because no one wanted to buy them, the source said.
North Korea’s economic difficulties have deepened since it went ahead with a second nuclear test in May last year, which triggered tougher UN sanctions.
USA :
CANADA :
Lindt chocolate: Bean to bar in Stratham
Cocoa bean roasting facility opens
By Alexis Macarchuk/news@seacoastonline.com/June 17, 2010
STRATHAM — The U.S. headquarters of Lindt & Sprüngli chocolate is expanding in more ways than one.
The addition of a 40,000-square-foot bean roasting facility will allow for the production of the popular Lindor truffles and chocolate bars from bean to packaged product under one roof, and will also bring new jobs to the Seacoast.
Gov. John Lynch, who spoke Wednesday at the unveiling of the facility, thanked company executives for choosing to operate and expand Lindt USA in the Granite State for more than 20 years.
“You could have chosen anywhere, but you chose Stratham, New Hampshire,” Lynch said. “It’s very flattering.”
Ernst Tanner, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Swiss-based Lindt & Sprüngli group, said the Stratham plant has grown substantially — from about 35 employees to 355 employees in the last 15 years.
“We are growing in this country and producing more products in Stratham,” he said.
The Stratham facility manufacturers more than 300 Lindt chocolate products, including Lindor truffles and the brand’s Excellence chocolate bar collection. In 2009, the plant installed a bar-line that generates 450 chocolate bars per minute.
Company executives said the recently constructed bean roasting facility will eliminate the process of sending cocoa beans from Africa and South America to Switzerland, where they were previously ground, roasted and cleaned before transport to North America. Now, the beans have a direct route to the factory in Stratham, where they ultimately become cocoa liquor — a key ingredient in chocolate.
Christine Thoreson, brand manager for Lindor USA, said although the process of roasting the beans is highly automated and can be controlled by only a handful of employees, increased production as a result of the new facility will mean more jobs at the Stratham plant — from marketing and sales to facility management and operation positions.
“The new process cuts down on the time it takes to make the product, increasing the volume we can produce,” she said.
The Stratham facility is home to Lindt master chocolatier Ann Czaja, who spent three years studying the art of premium chocolate making in Switzerland. She referred to the Stratham factory as a “well-oiled machine.”
“The passion does exist,” she said. “You could eat off the floors in the place. We guarantee the quality of every piece of chocolate.”
While production of U.S. Lindt products now happens exclusively in America, Tanner said the secret recipe and techniques used to create Lindt chocolate will always be from Switzerland.
“The product adheres to original Swiss recipes and standards, which have been honored for 165 years,” he said.
During the ceremony, Lynch read a proclamation declaring June 16, 2010, Lindt Chocolate Day.
Tim Copeland and Dave Canada of the Stratham Board of Selectmen said the Lindt chocolate factory has been “fantastic for the town of Stratham” because the facility creates jobs, generates town revenue from the collection of building permits and adds prestige to the Seacoast.
“Lindt is a premier corporate citizen, and we’re so lucky to have them in Stratham,” Canada said.
The Stratham factory produces Lindt chocolate for the United States, Canada, Mexico and England. The new bean roasting facility is a $30 million investment that will make Lindt one of only a few chocolate manufacturers in the world to have complete control of the chocolate-making process from start to finish.
AUSTRALIA :
Police to keep new stadium duties thru World Cup
mdn.mainichi.jp/AP/June 17, 2010
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The South African police will handle security at four major stadiums for the rest of the World Cup, because of an ongoing labor dispute.
Privately hired security stewards are on strike over wages, and police had already taken over their duties on an interim basis. The new announcement made clear that authorities no longer expect a settlement, and the police takeover will last through the final on July 11.
The decision, made after a meeting between police officials and the local organizing committee, affects two Johannesburg stadiums — Soccer City and Ellis Park, and stadiums at Durban and Cape Town. Even before the labor dispute, police had been handling most security duties at a fifth stadium in Port Elizabeth.
Five other stadiums have not been affected by the protest.
Soccer City — the largest of the World Cup venues — will host its first match under police-staffed security when Argentina plays South Korea on Thursday.
“Our priority is the safety of the tournament and the country as a whole,” said the national police commissioner, Gen. Bheki Cele. “We will perform our responsibilities with diligence and pride”.
The protests began Sunday night when police used tear gas and fired rubber bullets to disperse stewards in Durban who were angry about their wages and refused to leave Moses Mabhida Stadium.
The dispute spread to Johannesburg on Tuesday. South African police deployed 1,000 officers to screen more than 54,000 fans arriving for Brazil’s 2-1 victory over North Korea at Ellis Park after employees from security contractor Stallion walked out hours before the evening kickoff.
The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, which represents many security workers, said it had asked the Labor Department to investigate whether laws were broken during the recruitment of the security stewards.
“FIFA and the local organizing committee are fully responsible for the fiasco that is unfolding,” the union said in a statement. “These bodies have created a situation which is undermining our national pride, and they should be made liable.”
According to the union, most of the security workers hired for the World Cup did not have written contracts, were paid less than promised, received inadequate training and were forced to work in substandard conditions.
Rich Mkhondo, spokesman for the local organizing committee, declined to address how the organizers, who are responsible for all venue security at the World Cup, would pay for using additional police.
Asked whether organizers were preparing to fire Stallion, which was contracted to provide security at the five stadiums now under police control, Mkhondo said he had “no comment about this issue.”
FIFA spokesman Nicolas Maingot said he was not aware if the organization would be required to help fund the policing bill.
In Durban, stewards joined community activists Wednesday in a peaceful rally of about 800 people outside City Hall to protest the World Cup, which they say has directed public funds away from providing housing and jobs.
Protesters held placards that said “Apartheid Still Exists” and “World Cup for All! People Before Profit.”
“Today’s march is to give a voice to people who have been left out of the World Cup and to protect people who are being exploited by companies involved in the World Cup,” said Lubna Nadvi, from the Durban Social Forum.
Cyril Xaba, a special adviser to the provincial prime minister in KwaZulu-Natal, said the government could not intervene in the labor dispute, which could be settled by a state-funded arbitration committee.
“People have benefited from the World Cup,” Xaba said. “Roads are built, stadiums were built and that brought jobs. There was also more work in the hospitality industry and more taxes raised by the government — so everyone benefits from this, even when it’s not visible straight away.
“Of course, we are not naive and we realize that not everyone can benefit directly,” he said. “I sympathize with them.”
(Mainichi Japan) June 17, 2010
EUROPE :
Harare blamed for delaying full relations with EU
by Sebastian Nyamhangambiri/ www.zimonline.co.za/ Thursday 17 June 2010
HARARE — The European Union (EU) head of delegation to Zimbabwe Xavier Marchal on Wednesday said lack of progress in implementation of the country’s power-sharing deal was delaying full restoration of relations between Harare and Brussels.
“The normalisation of relations between Zimbabwe and Europe hinges on what Zimbabwe does,” Marchal told journalists, moments after handing over 24 ambulances to the Ministry of Health. “The benchmarks are set in the global political agreement (GPA) and not by the EU. We want the (Zimbabwean) parties to act in good faith,” said Marchal.
The EU also announced the allocation of new support to the tune of 19.5 million Euros in 2010 to improve the country’s almost collapsed health delivery system. ??
The GPA is the power-sharing agreement that was signed by President Robert Mugabe of ZANU PF and his political foe Morgan Tsvangirai in 2008 giving birth to Zimbabwe’s coalition government last year.
But the Harare coalition has been marred by disagreements between Mugabe and Tsvangirai, who is now Prime Minister, over implementation of the agreement.
Analysts say Mugabe is reluctant to fully implement the GPA because doing so would dilute ZANU PF party’s 30-year hold on power.??
Tsvangirai last year travelled to Europe to try to kick start normalisation of relations between Brussels and Harare which have been strained since 2002 when the EU imposed smart sanctions on Mugabe and his ZANU PF inner circle accusing them of rigging elections and human rights abuses. ??
“There have been ups and downs in the process (of normalising relations since last year). While we will not concentrate on the downs, I must say what has happened is what we want. We want relationship between EU and Zimbabwe to normalise. That can only happen if the GPA is fully implemented,” Marchal said.
Mugabe says he will not fulfill all his commitment under the GPA until Tsvangirai calls for the EU and its Western allies to lift sanctions against himself and top leaders of ZANU PF.
The veteran leader says Tsvangirai campaigned for imposition of the sanctions when he was still opposition leader.
Tsvangirai denies responsibility for calling for lifting of sanctions and says instead Mugabe should allow democratic reforms in the country to persuade Western governments to scrap the punitive measures. — ZimOnline
CHINA :
StanChart, AgBank to tap Asia-Africa flows
Thu Jun 17, 2010 /Reuters
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Standard Chartered and Agricultural Bank of China, which is preparing for a likely record-breaking IPO, will work together to tap rising trade flows between Asia and Africa.
Standard Chartered, an emerging markets focused lender, did not say if the strategic partnership with AgBank in any way signalled it would be a cornerstone investor in the Chinese lender’s planned $23 billion initial public offering.
The banks said the partnership meant AgBank’s Chinese corporate clients would gain access to international capital markets, leveraging on Standard Chartered global reach.
Standard Chartered said in a statement on Thursday the alliance would allow the banks to explore opportunities in China and StanChart’s domestic markets.
It is the second bank after Netherlands-based RaboBank
to sign a strategic alliance with AgBank. RaboBank has not ruled out being a cornerstone investor in AgBank.
Several wealthy investors in Hong Kong and sovereign wealth funds have agreed to plough billions of dollars into AgBank’s IPO.
Beijing-based AgBank, best known for its customer base that spreads across China’s far-flung regions but which has a major presence in most big cities, is run by Xiang Junbo, 53, a scriptwriter and war hero, who previously served in top posts in China’s central bank and National Audit Office.
Singapore’s state investment fund Temasek plans to invest up to $300 million in the IPO, a source with direct knowledge of the matter has said, and Middle East and other Asian wealth funds are expected to step in as cornerstone investors.
Standard Chartered said it and AgBank would explore collaboration in retail and wholesale banking products and services within China and internationally.
“The partnership will focus on the increasingly strong intra-Asia and Asia-Africa trade corridors … while also looking at joint opportunities across ABC’s and Standard Chartered’s domestic Chinese market operations,” it said.
AgBank, China’s third-biggest lender by assets, has said up to 40 percent of the Shanghai offering, including the green-shoe option, would be placed with strategic investors.
The IPO by AgBank, founded by Mao Zedong in the 1950s as the central bank’s rural arm, had previously been touted as high as $30 billion, but has been scaled back as China’s stock market has dropped by more than a fifth this year and global markets have been spooked by a euro zone debt crisis.
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EN BREF, CE 17 juin 2010… AGNEWS /OMAR, BXL,17/06/201
