AFRICANEWS

War and Peace

Speaking at Roberts International Airport directly after talks with Presidents Alpha Omar Konare of Mali and Ahmad Tejan Kabbah of Sierra Leone, Taylor said he would write to the UN Security Council to complain about the incursion and ask the world body to lift its embargo on arms sales to Liberia.

A man identified as Emmanuel Moore has claimed to be the spokesman of the dissidents, who call themselves Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a diplomatic source said. Moore claimed the capture of Voinjama, the Lofa county capital, and four other targets, an assertion which Liberian military analysts dismissed as "falsehoods and fabrication", the diplomat said. The clashes in Lofa, which started on 8 July, led the only aid agency operating in upper Lofa County, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to suspend its operations there. (Source: IRIN)

Rwanda
In a scathing indictment of the failure to halt the worst genocide since World War II, an international panel blames the UN Security Council, the USA, France and the Catholic Church for failing to prevent the slaughter of more than 500,000 Rwandans. The seven- member panel created by the Organisation of African Unity called for the international community especially those countries that failed to prevent or help stop the 1994 genocide, to pay reparations to Rwanda "in the name of both justice and accountability". Meanwhile US

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on 9 July said the international panel was wrong to blame the USA for failing to prevent the slaughter. She also opposed US inaction against genocide in Rwanda. (Source: CNN)

Somalia
The Djibouti-hosted Somali National Peace conference has hit a deadlock over the method of appointment to the Transitional National Council, sources close to the conference told IRIN on 6 July. They said political decisions were "dragging". Puntland delegates were petitioning for elections to be held on the basis of pre-civil war districts, while all other participants were campaigning for elections to be held on the basis of clan. Opinion was also divided on whether the president should be elected by the peace conference or by the Transitional National Council. Policies regarding health, education and agriculture have been outlined for a new government. It seemed likely that the conference would agree to use Baidoa as a temporary capital while the devastated national capital, Mogadishu, was renovated, a source told IRIN.

Sierra leone
Three rights groups on 14 July urged the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to resume preparations for the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Sierra Leone, ARTICLE 19 reported.

The groups are ARTICLE 19, the Global Campaign for Free Expression, and the Sierra Leone Working Group on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC preparatory phase was suspended when the Lome Peace agreement between Sierra Leone's government and Revolutionary United Front (RUF) virtually collapsed in early May.

The Working Group carried out consultations over the past month to find out people's attitudes to crucial issues of truth and justice following the agreement's virtual collapse, according to Article 19. It quoted the Working Group's chair, John Caulker, as saying on 14 july: "We found a strong consensus that key rebel leaders should face some kind of special criminal court operating under international law, but that there is still a real need for the TRC." (Source: IRIN)

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