UN Council Angered at Eritrea over Border Force

UNITED NATIONS, April 22 (Reuters) - Security Council members voiced anger on Tuesday at moves by Eritrea to force a U.N. peacekeeping mission to leave its border with Ethiopia, but postponed a decision on how to respond. "The members of the council were unanimous in that the way the peacekeepers of UNMEE (the U.N. force) have been treated in Eritrea is totally unacceptable," South African Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo, current council president, told reporters. The United Nations has almost completely withdrawn some 1,700 troops and military observers from a buffer zone along the border between the two Horn of Africa rivals after Asmara cut fuel supplies to the mission. Eritrea said countrywide shortages had prompted the move, but President Isaias Afwerki said last week the continued presence of U.N. peacekeepers on the Red Sea state's border with Ethiopia, scene of a 1998-200 war, was illegal.

The peacekeepers had been stationed in a 15.5-mile (25-km) zone inside Eritrea. But Eritrea turned against UNMEE because of U.N. inability to enforce rulings by an independent commission awarding Asmara chunks of Ethiopian-held territory. Kumalo conceded that Eritrea had genuine concerns. He said the council would return to the issue, probably next week. "We have to take time to really think this through," he said. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a report earlier this month that if the peacekeepers abandoned the 620-mile (1,000-km) border, a new war could break out, although both countries have said they do not plan to renew hostilities. Ban offered several options, including the permanent withdrawal of UNMEE, deploying a small observer mission in the border area, establishing liaison offices in Addis Ababa and Asmara or returning to the original full deployment. The last option, however, looks unlikely given Eritrea's refusal to discuss the issue. "The United Nations cannot really achieve a result if the two countries do not follow up on the commitment they made in 2000," when they agreed to host UNMEE, U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno, who briefed the council, told reporters. Most UNMEE troops have been sent home temporarily and less than 200 are now in Eritrea, with a few in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has offered to hold talks with Eritrea but Asmara says Addis Ababa must first withdraw from Eritrean territory. Both sides have amassed troops in recent months. U.S. envoy Alejandro Wolff said there was "a mood in the council of great, great dissatisfaction at the manner in which Eritrea has handled this," and accused the Eritreans of "shooting themselves in the foot." "In the long term Eritrea will pay a big price for this misjudgment," he told reporters, without elaborating. (Editing by Alan Elsner)
By Patrick Worsnip
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UN Troops Overworked and Outgunned in the Badlands of Darfur

Disappointment and fear continues for the people of Sileia (Panos)
Sileia, West Darfur: April 24th. (NY Times) - The peacekeepers could do nothing to stop the huge Antonov aircraft flying over the tiny town of Sileia, close to Sudan’s border with Chad. They were too late to stop the Janjawid – the feared Arab militia, some on horseback and some in Toyota pickup trucks – sent in to do the Government’s dirty work, looting or destroying anything they couldn’t carry away. The first soldiers into Sileia, in fact, were Sudanese armed forces who arrived the next day to take control of the town. They painted over graffiti proclaiming support for one of the main rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), and raised the Sudanese flag in the sandy central square. Now, the women say the soldiers are doing what soldiers do in times of war in towns where the men are away fighting. At night, single women bed down close to the house of the fursha – a tribal mayor – where they can be better protected. “Three days ago there were women sleeping who were woken by soldiers with guns in the middle of the night,” Mariam Ibrihim Adam, 58, said. “I don’t know what happened but there were men with women and then all the women ran to the fursha’s house for protection.” She won’t mention rape: the subject is taboo in this part of Sudan where life has changed little in centuries. Here raped women bring shame to their tribe.

Five years ago the people of Darfur could have told the above tale with little variation, except that the peacekeepers were from the African Union, a beleaguered and hybrid force of soldiers and police. On January 1 they were joined by United Nations personnel, which is supposed to swell to a 26,000-strong force eventually monitoring ceasefire violations and protect civilians and aid workers from attack. No one knows when the force will reach full strength. Contributing countries are struggling to meet their commitments; 2,000 troops have joined the 7,000-strong AU force to form the United Nations and African Union Mission in Darfur (Unamid). Most of the latter merely painted their green helmets blue and carried on as before. So the disappointment and fear continue for the people of Sileia, who live in a area of Darfur that has seen the worst fighting this year. “Now the UN cars are here, stood in front of us,” Adam Omar Mohammed, 88, a Sufi preacher, said, pointing to an armoured personnel carrier sharing shade with donkeys beneath a tree. “So we feel safe. But we want the UN to come here and stay here.” Rebels of the JEM seized a handful of towns last December and looked to be closing in on the regional capital, El Geneina. Then, in February, they were called back across the border to Chad, where their paymaster President Idriss Déby was under attack from Sudanese-backed rebels. They managed to defend his capital, Ndjamena, but Sudan used their absence to take back the “northern corridor” of towns including Sileia, Sirba and Abu Sirouj. Their tactics were eerily reminiscent of the early days: Antonovs first, followed by Janjawid and then government soldiers. They left behind a string of blackened towns. It was days before Unamid monitors arrived from their headquarters in El Geneina, where they had been besieged by aid workers demanding they intervene. “We feel disappointed,” Colonel Amgad Morsy, chief of staff for Unamid Sector West, said. “We don’t have the capability. It’s a weekly and daily dispute that refugees come and say their people are being harassed, their women are raped.”

Unamid has had some successes. It has resumed night patrols of the camps around El Geneina, arrested a handful of Janjawid raiders and now escorts women as they collect firewood – all activities that the morale-sapped AU force abandoned after becoming a target for rebels and government-backed militias alike. Unamid is planning to build a base for monitors in Sileia and is running long-range patrols across the territory to show locals that it is serious about their security. But the force only has 9,000 people to look after an area the size of France. They still lack the helicopters they need to get around rapidly and even the rations for long-distance patrols. Alun McDonald, a spokesman for Oxfam, said international pressure had focused on deploying a force without giving any thought to securing peace in Darfur.

— Figures for deaths in Darfur vary wildly. UN officials now estimate that the death toll from five years of conflict may be as high as 300,000 – revised from 200,000, the 2006 figure

— In 2005, the US State Department estimated the total number of deaths at between 60,000 and 160,000. They were accused of understating the scale of the killing dramatically

— Eric Reeves, a Sudan expert at Smith College in Massachusetts, puts the figure at 450,000

— The highest death rate is believed to have occurred from October 2003 to March 2004. As many as 11,400 people are thought to have been killed each month.
by Rob Crilly in Sileia, West Darfur
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Opposition ‘Clear Victor’ in Zimbabwe, U.S. Says

A Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe, sat last week in South Africa. China now says it will return and not deliver its cargo. (Associated Press)

PRETORIA, South Africa: April 25th. (NY Times) — The top American envoy to Africa declared Thursday that Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was the “clear victor” over President Robert Mugabe in the nation’s disputed election and called on other countries — including the United States — to help solve the deepening political and humanitarian crisis there. The diplomat, Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the election results, based on projections by independent monitors, removed the rationale for any negotiated settlement that left Mr. Mugabe in charge, as was proposed Wednesday in an editorial in The Herald, the state-run newspaper. “This is a government rejecting the will of the people,” Ms. Frazer said, referring to the Zimbabwe electoral commission’s refusal to announce who won the March 29 presidential election. “If they had voted for Mugabe, the results would already have been announced. Everyone knows what time it is.”

The United States has deferred in recent years to South Africa, the region’s most powerful nation, to mediate between ZANU-PF, Zimbabwe’s governing party, and its political rivals. But at a news briefing on Thursday in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital, Ms. Frazer said the severity of the human rights violations by state-sponsored groups against opposition supporters now required the involvement of more players: the African Union, the UN and other nations, including the United States. “We can’t stand back and wait for this to escalate further,” she said. Earlier Thursday, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that a Chinese ship bound for Zimbabwe would turn back without unloading its cargo of bullets and mortar bombs made by a Chinese state-owned company. “The Chinese company has already decided to send the military goods back to China in the same vessel, the An Yue Jiang,” Jiang Yu, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a briefing. The arms shipment has been a particularly contentious issue because of widespread concerns about politically motivated violence in the wake of the elections. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said Wednesday in Parliament that he would “promote proposals for an embargo on all arms to Zimbabwe.” On Thursday Ms. Frazer praised his idea as one that the United States would “consider seriously.”

Mr. Mugabe, 84, who has led Zimbabwe for 28 years, will undoubtedly seize on their criticism to buttress his contention that only he can defend the nation’s sovereignty. He has long depicted himself as the defiant African leader who will stand up to the British and the Americans, while painting his rival, Mr. Tsvangirai, as their stooge. Jacob G. Zuma — the leader of South Africa’s governing party, the ANC, and potentially a future president of South Africa — said Wednesday that he was concerned that the British and the Americans had undercut their influence on Zimbabwe. Speaking before a meeting with Mr. Brown, who has accused Mr. Mugabe of stealing the election, Mr. Zuma said the approach the British and the Americans had taken “undermined the possibility of their playing a meaningful role in Zimbabwe.” On Thursday, he said in London that he did not support Mr. Brown’s call for a full-fledged arms embargo and ruled out South African military intervention in Zimbabwe. South Africa’s opinion on an embargo is critical because it controls the main trade routes into Zimbabwe. Even so, China’s decision to turn the ship around was welcomed by the dock workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, Western diplomats and human rights workers who have been campaigning to block the delivery of the weapons to Zimbabwe. “This is a great victory for the trade union movement in particular and civil society in general in putting its foot down and saying we will not allow weapons that could be used to kill and maim our fellow workers and Zimbabweans to be transported across South Africa,” said Patrick Craven, spokesman for the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which represents 1.9 million South African workers. China’s strategic retreat in delivering the weapons also allows it to avoid Zimbabwe-related protests over its human rights record before the Olympic Games in Beijing in August. The months leading to the Games have already been marked by protests over China’s suppression of protesters in Tibet and criticism of it for supplying arms to the government of Sudan.

In Britain, Anglican church leaders warned of the deteriorating situation in Zimbabwe and urged international mediation. The leaders — the archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, and the archbishop of York, John Sentamu — issued a statement saying people were being “beaten, intimidated or oppressed” and warning that “political violence and drift could unleash spiraling communal violence,” as has been seen elsewhere in Africa. Zimbabwe’s governing party has been following the fate of the arms shipment. The Herald, a mouthpiece for Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF, reported Thursday that China had said the shipment had been ordered before the elections and had nothing to do with “what was taking place in Zimbabwe at the moment.” It quoted Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa as saying that Zimbabwe had a right to arm itself and defend its territorial integrity and “dismissing suggestions that the military would want to use the arms against civilians.” Human rights researchers and doctors treating victims of the political crackdown in Zimbabwe said they feared that a government short on bullets because of the country’s economic collapse would use an infusion of arms from China to make the crackdown more lethal. The ship sailed into Durban harbor in South Africa last week. The government there had already issued a permit to allow the arms to be trucked across South Africa to landlocked Zimbabwe when dock workers declared they would not unload the weapons, and an Anglican archbishop persuaded a judge to temporarily prohibit the arms delivery across South African soil.
by Celia W. Dugger reported from Pretoria, David Barboza from Shanghai and Alan Cowell from London. Graham Bowley contributed reporting from New York.
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Ending Child Labor Tricky Job for India

In a nation where tens of millions of kids work, employing those as young as 5 is legal—and a key source of family income
BANGALORE, India: April 17th. (Chicago Tribune) — Rajeshwari spent her childhood trailing her mother on Bangalore's streets, helping her sift through roadside trash for recyclables. Now 15, she's still working, currently as a night dishwasher for a company catering wedding parties. Like many of the tens of millions of child laborers in India—plenty of whose labor ends up in exports to the United States—she sees holding down a job less as a violation of her human rights than as a simple reality of life. "I don't work because I want to. I have to," the pigtailed girl says without resentment. Stamping out child labor is a tricky business for India's government. As officials try to modernize both India's economy and its image, they aim to cut back on a practice that much of the world sees as abhorrent. But in a nation where tens of millions of kids work, children's labor is not just a key source of financial support for families, it is legal. The government over the last year and a half has put more jobs off-limits for kids, staged raids on factory sweatshops and pushed children nabbed at work back in school. But children's advocates say the campaign may not do much to better the lives of many kids. "What is happening is making things worse for children," argued Kavita Ratna, a spokeswoman for The Concerned for Working Children, a non-profit group for child laborers in Bangalore, one of southern India's high-tech centers.

Under Indian law, children under 14 are free to work as long as the job isn't deemed "hazardous." At least 12.7 million do, according to government figures, and the United Nations and children's advocacy groups estimate the number is above 40 million. Across the country, children as young as 5 — working legally — collect fees at parking lots, sort recyclables, pick crops, pack boxes at factories and sell vegetables by the roadside and magazines in traffic. Many earn only pennies a day; others, older and more skilled, can earn the equivalent of $5 a day or more. That is an ongoing problem for U.S. companies that manufacture items in India. Clothing retailer Gap discovered late last year that children in a New Delhi factory were embroidering blouses intended for sale at GapKids stores in the United States and Europe. It has since withdrawn the garments from its shops, suspended orders from factories found to be using child labor and promised the now out-of-work children a variety of help, including their jobs back once they reach legitimate working age. But sweatshops continue to spring up around the country. Other U.S. companies have faced similar concerns in the production of clothes, handicrafts, sporting goods, jewelry, decorative stone, carpets and agricultural products, among other exports from India.

Since the end of 2006, kids under 14 also have been officially banned from many jobs they have historically held — cleaning hotel rooms, serving food in restaurants, working as maids in homes — though unofficially many remain at work. The government also has set up programs in 250 districts around the country aimed at getting working kids back in schools. The effort "is working," said Harjot Kaur, director of child labor in India's Ministry of Labor and Employment, who predicts the number of child laborers will be way down by the next census in 2011. But child advocacy groups say raids on factory sweatshops, where children labor illegally, often end with kids left in legal limbo in state "observation homes," or tossed into decrepit state schools. The raids also have driven child labor from factory front rooms, where it is easy to monitor, into hidden recesses of workplaces, where the potential for abuse is greater, the advocates say. And kids plucked from jobs and reunited with the families that sent them off to work in the first place often find themselves quickly back in another job, or suffering abuse and hunger at home.

In India today, "if you call yourself a working child, people pounce on you and drag you to the nearest school. Child labor has become a dirty word," Ratna said. "No one wants to admit there are still working children." She recounts the story of a midnight raid on a silver factory in Bangalore some years back where 150 child workers were bundled onto a train back to their home state in northeast India. Many, who shared no common language with their rescuers, were terrified by the unexpected invasion or were traumatically separated from older working siblings left behind at the factory during the raid. Many did not want to return home. A year later, when a Bangalore professor went to check on the children, she could find none of them in their home villages. "The parents said, 'Why did you bring them back? We sent them there because we don't have food to eat,' " Ratna remembers the woman recounting. Maoist rebels in the region also were a threat to the kids if they remained there, the parents said, insisting that the children were safer in Bangalore. Ratna's group — which takes the practical view that child labor isn't going to disappear any time soon — argues that the most effective way to help child workers is not to force them out of their jobs but to protect and empower them while there.

The advocacy group over the past 17 years has helped working children set up or strengthen informal networks that help them share information, protect each other and advocate for better conditions. For instance, Rajeshwari, the vice president of Bhima Sangha, a working children's union created by Ratna's group, said local cells of 10 or 12 working children have helped provide financial and emotional support to children forced out of jobs or abused in them, as well as other practical help. In some cases, children's groups have pressed employers to provide medical care for children injured at work, or passed information to authorities about underage maids who are abused. After a Bangalore hotel fire killed three child workers, children's union members wrote a report for the state government that may have contributed to children under 14 being banned from hotel work, according to The Concerned for Working Children. "Earlier most people would not listen to us. Now they listen," said Rajeshwari, whose new night job allows her to attend school during the day. "We got to know what our rights are. We feel proud." Ratna said her organization's efforts simply formalize and expand "very sophisticated systems" many working children have already created to help each other. Her group tries to make the lives of child laborers easier by experimenting with counterintuitive ideas like helping them get access to small-business loans and teaching them negotiation and business skills. It has also worked to find ways to help children balance work with staying in school.

Reducing the number of child laborers in India, child advocates say, will require helping parents find better-paying jobs that let them support their families without children's salaries and improving the country's public schools. Until those problems are resolved, "you can be outraged as much as you want" by child labor, Ratna said. "But what does it do for the child?"
By Laurie Goering
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Darfur Food Rations Cut, Ban Decries Rising Insecurity

Food rations will be halved as supplies are not getting to the IDP camps in Darfur (Derk Segaar/IRIN)
NAIROBI, 17 April 2008 (IRIN) - Banditry in Darfur has prevented the delivery of sufficient food stocks to the western Sudanese region, thereby forcing the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to reduce monthly rations, the agency said. The rations, which benefited 2.4 million people in March, will be halved per person per day from May, WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said on 17 April. So far this year, 60 WFP-contracted trucks have been hijacked in Darfur, of which 39 are still missing. Twenty six drivers remain unaccounted for, while one was killed last month. As result, food deliveries have dropped to 900 tonnes per day from 1,800 tonnes a year ago. "Attacks on the WFP food pipeline are an attack on the most vulnerable people in Darfur," Josette Sheeran, WFP Executive Director, said in a statement on 17 April. "With up to three million people depending on us for their survival in the upcoming rainy season, keeping WFP's supply line open is a matter of life and death," she added. "We call on all parties to protect the access to food." WFP appealed to rebel factions in Darfur to ensure security on the roads and to respect the neutrality of humanitarian workers. "If the security situation on the roads improves, we will be able to restore the ration levels," said Kenro Oshidari, WFP Representative in Sudan.

The announcement followed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's latest report on Darfur, in which he said prospects for a negotiated political solution to the crisis had become remote. Both the Sudanese government and rebels appear determined to pursue a military solution, while the international community had failed to supply helicopters and other logistics to the under-staffed African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID). "I am extremely disappointed in the lack of progress on all fronts," the Secretary-General said in the report, which covers UNAMID’s operations for three months. "The parties appear determined to pursue a military solution, the political process stalled, the deployment of UNAMID is progressing very slowly and continues to face many challenges, and the humanitarian situation is not improving." He described as grave the implications of the current security situation for Darfurians. Attacks on food convoys and general violence were hindering aid provision, while sexual and gender-based violence in and around camps for internally displaced persons was high.

UNAMID was set up in 2007 with a projected strength of 26,000 military and police personnel, but it has only 10,600 in the field, including 1,400 civilians. Aid agencies estimate that 200,000 people have died since conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003, while 4.5 million have been directly affected.
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Pope Speaks Up for Immigrants, Touching a Nerve

April 20th. NY Times: - Even as he was flying to the United States, Pope benedict XVI, spoke of protecting immigrant families, not dividing them. He raised the issue again in a meeting on Wednesday with President Bush, and later that day spoke in Spanish to the church’s “many immigrant children.” And when he ends his visit to New York on Sunday, he will be sent off by a throng of the faithful, showing off the ethnic diversity of American Catholicism. The choreography underscores the importance to the church here of its growing diversity — especially its increasing Hispanic membership. Of the nation’s 65 million Roman Catholics, 18 million are Latino, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and they account for more than two-thirds of the new Catholics in the country since 1960. Millions of other recent arrivals come from Asia and Africa. More and more parishes depend on priests brought from abroad to serve the flock.

Benedict has calibrated his immigration stance with care, stating the need to protect family unity and immigrants’ human rights, but pointedly avoiding any specifics of the American immigration debate, like the issue of whether to grant legal status to illegal immigrants. Yet last week his visit quickly stirred the crosscurrents of the debate. His comments drew a rebuke from Representative Tom Tancredo, a Republican from Colorado who has been a leading opponent of illegal immigration. Accusing the pope of “faith-based marketing,” Mr. Tancredo said Benedict’s comments welcoming immigrants “may have less to do with spreading the Gospel than they do about recruiting new members of the Church.” Mr. Tancredo, a former Catholic who now attends an evangelical Christian church, said it was not in the pope’s “job description to engage in American politics.” On the other side of the issue, some members of the Catholic hierarchy said they were shocked that on the same day that Benedict and President Bush affirmed in a joint statement the need for a policy that treats immigrants humanely and protects their families, federal agents were conducting raids at five chicken plants. They arrested more than 300 immigrants accused of being illegal workers. The timing was coincidental, immigration officials said, and it was not clear whether the pope had known about the arrests when he met with Mr. Bush. But the raids surprised some American Catholic leaders, who are often on the forefront of advocacy for immigrant rights. “I was stunned,” said Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest Roman Catholic diocese and one with many Hispanics. “I just feel these raids are totally negative. I thought it was very inappropriate to do it in such a blatant way when the pope was coming, when he has been so outspoken in defending the rights of immigrants.”

The American bishops have been consistently outspoken in favor of legislation to give legal status to illegal immigrants and expand legal avenues for immigrants to bring their family members from abroad. They and other Catholic activists were among the most visible supporters of a broad bill, supported by Mr. Bush but not enacted by Congress last year, which included a path to legal status for 12 million illegal immigrants. They took Benedict’s statements last week as affirmation of their work. For while the immigration theme has been overshadowed during Benedict’s trip by his denunciations of the sexual abuse scandal in the church, it was the second issue after the abuse cases that he addressed on the plane from Rome, when he responded to reporters’ questions that were submitted in advance and picked by the Vatican. The separation of families “is truly dangerous for the social, moral and human fabric” of Latin and Central American families, the pope told reporters aboard his plane. “The fundamental solution is that there should no longer be a need to emigrate, that there are enough jobs in the homeland, a sufficient social fabric,” he said. Short of that, families should be protected, not destroyed, he said. “As much as it can be done it should be done,” the pontiff said.

The pope did not just send a message to the president and the public, he spoke to the bishops. In his private meeting with them on Wednesday evening, he emphasized that recent newcomers to the United States are “people of faith, and we are here to welcome them,” Cardinal Mahony said. The pope also dwelled on the negative impact of family separation. Several bishops took that as a direct reference to the impact of previous immigration raids and deportations, in which illegal immigrant parents were separated from spouses and children who were United States citizens or legal immigrants. “Obviously the Holy Father is not encouraging people to do anything illegal,” Cardinal Mahony said. But the raids “do not serve as a deterrent,” he said, adding, “They simply create fear and uncertainty in our communities.”Times reporters and experts discuss Benedict XVI’s papacy and his visit to the United States.

Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City said the pope was “not going to get into the specific points that our country has to hash out.” Bishop Wester, who is chairman of the Committee on Migration of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the pontiff had told the bishops “very clearly that we need to attend to the basic human rights immigrants have.” Bishop Wester also criticized the immigration raids, which took place at plants in five states belonging to Pilgrim’s Pride, a major poultry processing company. Immigration officials said they did not consider the pope’s visit when planning the operations, which they said came after a yearlong investigation. But Bishop Wester said: “It did strike me as inappropriate. The pope comes as a man of peace, a man of good will, the leader of a major religion. Many of the persons arrested were Catholic.” As recently as mid-March, he said, his committee met with Julie L. Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that carried out the raids. The bishops asked Ms. Myers not to conduct raids in churches and to ensure legal representation for immigrants, Bishop Wester said.

The pope returned to the theme several times over the course of his visit, which ends Sunday. About 4,000 church members from the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Queens, will hold a prayer service in 29 languages at Kennedy Airport. About half will be immigrants, said Msgr. Ronald T. Marino, the Brooklyn Diocese’s vicar for migration. Many will wear the costumes of their homelands. The pope will not attend, but the crowd will bid him farewell. “Not a word has to be spoken,” the monsignor said. “What you will see says it all.” In Washington, Benedict encouraged the American bishops and their communities “to continue to welcome immigrants who join your ranks today, to share their joys and hopes, to support them in their sorrows and trials, and to help them flourish in their new home.” That, he said, was the American tradition. And in a meeting with Catholic educators, he emphasized the importance of keeping Catholic schools open, especially to serve immigrants and the underprivileged. Catholic leaders say such words have bolstered their work, yet the pope’s emphasis is no surprise in a country where much of the church’s growth and vitality comes from the influx of immigrant Catholics.

Following the polyglot practice of his predecessor, John Paul II, Benedict used Spanish to directly address the Latino portion of his flock during the homily at his Mass at Nationals Park in Washington on Thursday. The Church has grown thanks to their vitality, he said, and God calls on them to keep contributing. Priests and bishops who lobby elected officials and minister directly to immigrants can be more explicit. Monsignor Marino, for example, who also heads the Brooklyn Diocese’s Catholic Migration Office, said, “In my judgment, immigrants are heroes.” He applauded the pope’s words. “The simple pointing to it as one of his priorities, something coming out of his mouth, is real important,” Monsignor Marino said. “For him to say one sentence means he knows the rest.” Thomas G. Wenski, the bishop of Orlando, Fla., and a former head of the bishops’ Migration Committee who remains a consultant to it, said he hoped the pope’s visit would have a practical effect. “The pope’s visit will unleash some good will here so that Congress might live up to its responsibility and deal with the issue,” Bishop Wenski said.

In a letter in December, Cardinal Mahony chastised all the presidential candidates for campaigns that he said had “inflamed anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.” Since then the three remaining candidates, Senators John McCain of Arizona, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have lowered the volume on the immigration issue. Secular advocates for immigrants also welcomed the pope’s words. “That’s big news,” said Teresa Gutierrez, a coordinator for the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Workers Rights. “Any decent comment about the reality of what’s really happening to immigration in the United States coming from such a prestigious person as the pope is extremely helpful.”
by Daniel J. Walkin and Julia Preston
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POPE AT GROUND ZERO: GOD BRING PEACE TO OUR VIOLENT WORLD

The Pope offered a prayer at the site. (Chris Hondros/Getty Images)
VATICAN CITY, 20 APR 2008 (VIS) - In New York at 9.30 a .m. local time today, the Pope visited Ground Zero, the name now used to refer to the site once occupied by the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. On 11 September 2001 two aircraft crashed into the twin towers, destroying them and a number of neighbouring buildings in a terrorist attack which cost the lives of 2,896 people. The site today is a vast 80-metre deep crater, surrounded by a fence and marked with a cross. In 2002 the reconstruction of the World Trade Centre was put out for tender in a competition won by the architect Daniel Libensky. Today, Ground Zero is a construction site where work is scheduled to finish in the year 2012. The main building of the new complex will be the "Freedom Tower ", 541 metres high. Benedict XVI arrived at Ground Zero accompanied by Cardinal Edward Egan, archbishop of New York . Awaiting him there were Michael Bloomberg, mayor of the city; David A. Paterson and John Corzine, respectively governors of New York and of New Jersey ; 24 people representing the forces that responded to the attack of 11 September, and a number of injured and relatives of the victims.

The Holy Father kneeled for a few minutes of silent prayer for the victims of the attack, then lit a candle before pronouncing the following prayer:
"O God of love,compassion,and healing,look on us,people of many different faiths and traditions, who gather today at this site, the scene of incredible violence and pain. "We ask you in your goodness to give eternal light and peace to all who died here - the heroic first-responders: our fire fighters, police officers, emergency service workers, and Port Authority personnel, along with all the innocent men and women who were victims of this tragedy simply because their work or service brought them here on 11 September 2001. We ask you, in your compassion to bring healing to those who, because of their presence here that day, suffer from injuries and illness. Heal, too, the pain of still-grieving families and all who lost loved ones in this tragedy. Give them strength to continue their lives with courage and hope. "We are mindful as well of those who suffered death, injury, and loss on the same day at the Pentagon and in Shanksville , Pennsylvania. Our hearts are one with theirs as our prayer embraces their pain and suffering. "God of peace, bring your peace to our violent world: peace in the hearts of all men and women and peace among the nations of the earth. Turn to your way of love those whose hearts and minds are consumed with hatred. God of understanding, overwhelmed by the magnitude of this tragedy, we seek your light and guidance as we confront such terrible events. Grant that those whose lives were spared may live so that the lives lost here may not have been lost in vain. Comfort and console us, strengthen us in hope, and give us the wisdom and courage to work tirelessly for a world where true peace and love reign among nations and in the hearts of all".
The prayer over, the Pope greeted survivors of the attack,relatives of some of the victims, and members of the rescue squads. Finally, he imparted his blessing to those present. After the ceremony, the Holy Father returned to his residence where he bid farewell to the staff of the Holy See permanent mission to the United Nations in New York before having lunch in private.
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In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo

A soybean harvest in Campo Verde, Brazil. Genetically modified crops typically contain genes that help plants resist insects. (Paulo Fridman/Bloomberg News)
NY Times April 21st. - Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops. In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky. “We cannot afford it,” said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup. In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment. “I think it’s pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today,” said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a federally supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad.

The group, which once cautioned farmers about growing biotech wheat, is working to get seed companies to restart development of genetically modified wheat and to get foreign buyers to accept it. Even in Europe, where opposition to what the Europeans call Frankenfoods has been fiercest, some prominent government officials and business executives are calling for faster approvals of imports of genetically modified crops. They are responding in part to complaints from livestock producers, who say they might suffer a critical shortage of feed if imports are not accelerated. In Britain, the National Beef Association, which represents cattle farmers, issued a statement this month demanding that “all resistance” to such crops “be abandoned immediately in response to shifts in world demand for food, the growing danger of global food shortages and the prospect of declining domestic animal production.”

The chairman of the European Parliament's agriculture committee, Neil Parish, said that as prices rise, Europeans “may be more realistic” about genetically modified crops: “Their hearts may be on the left, but their pockets are on the right.” With food riots in some countries focusing attention on how the world will feed itself, biotechnology proponents see their chance. They argue that while genetic engineering might have been deemed unnecessary when food was abundant, it will be essential for helping the world cope with the demand for food and biofuels in the decades ahead. Through gene splicing, the modified crops now grown — mainly canola, corn, cotton and soybeans — typically contain bacterial genes that help the plants resist insects or tolerate a herbicide that can be sprayed to kill weeds while leaving the crop unscathed. Biotechnology companies are also working on crops that might need less water or fertilizer, which could have a bigger impact on improving yield. Certainly any new receptivity to genetically modified crops would be a boon to American exporters. The United States accounted for half the world’s acreage of biotech crops last year. But substantial amounts of corn, soy or canola are grown in Argentina, Brazil and Canada. China has developed insect-resistant rice that is awaiting regulatory approval in that country.

The pressure to re-evaluate biotech comes as prices of some staples like rice and wheat have doubled in the last few months, provoking violent protests in several countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti and Thailand. Factors behind the price spikes include the diversion of crops to make biofuel, rising energy prices, growing prosperity in India and China, and droughts in some regions — including Australia, a major grain producer. Biotechnology still certainly faces obstacles. Polls in Europe do not yet show a decisive shift in consumer sentiment, and the industry has had some recent setbacks. Since the beginning of the year France has banned the planting of genetically modified corn while Germany has enacted a law allowing for foods to be labeled as “G.M. free.” And a new international assessment of the future of agriculture, released last Tuesday, gave such tepid support to the role genetic engineering could play in easing hunger that biotechnology industry representatives withdrew from the project in protest. The report was a collaboration of more than 60 governments, with participation from companies and nonprofit groups, under the auspices of the World Bank and the UN.

Hans R. Herren, co-chairman of the project, said providing more fertilizer to Africa would improve output much more than genetic engineering could. “What farmers really are struggling with are water issues, soil fertility issues and market access for their products,” he said. Opponents of biotechnology say they see not so much an opportunity as opportunism by its proponents to exploit the food crisis. “Where politicians and technocrats have always wanted to push G.M.O.’s, they are jumping on this bandwagon and using this as an excuse,” said Helen Holder, who coordinates the campaign against biotech foods for Friends of the Earth Europe. G.M.O. refers to genetically modified organism. Even Michael Mack, the chief executive of the Swiss company Syngenta, an agricultural chemical and biotechnology giant, cautioned that the industry should not use the current crisis to push its agenda. Whatever importance biotechnology can play in the long run, food shortages are making it harder for some buyers to avoid engineered crops. The main reason some Japanese and South Korean makers of corn starch and corn sweeteners are buying biotech corn is that they have dwindling alternatives. Their main supplier is the United States, where 75 percent of corn grown last year was genetically modified, up from 40 percent in 2003. “We cannot get hold of non-G.M. corn nowadays,” said Yoon Chang-gyu, director of the Korean Corn Processing Industry Association.

But the tightening global supply has made it harder to get nonengineered corn from elsewhere. And as corn prices soar, millers and food companies are less able to pay the surcharge to keep nonengineered corn separate from biotech varieties. The surcharge itself has been rising. Mr. Yoon said non-engineered corn cost Korean millers about $450 a metric ton, up from $143 in 2006. Genetically engineered corn costs about $350 a ton. In Europe, livestock producers say that regulations on genetically modified crops could choke feed supplies at a time when they are already reeling from higher prices. Even after a new genetically engineered variety is approved for growing in the United States, it might take several years for Europe to approve it for import. Moreover, European rules require an entire shipment of grain to be turned back if it contains even a trace of an unapproved variety. Such a problem last year disrupted exports of corn gluten, a feed product, from the United States to Europe. Feed makers and livestock producers want faster approvals and a relaxation of the rules to allow for trace amounts of unapproved varieties in shipments. Even in the United States, where genetically engineered food has been generally accepted, the wheat industry has had to rethink its reluctance to accept biotech varieties. Because about half of America’s wheat crop is exported, farmers and processors feared foreign buyers would reject their products. Facing resistance from American farmers, Monsanto in 2004 suspended development of what would have been the first genetically modified wheat.

But some farmers and millers now say that the lack of genetically engineered wheat has made growing the grain less attractive than growing corn or soybeans. That has, in turn, contributed to shrinking supplies and rising prices for wheat. Milling & Baking News, an influential trade newspaper in Kansas City, Mo., said in an editorial that companies that used wheat were now paying the price for their own “hesitancy, if not outright opposition” to biotechnology.
By Andrew Pollack with Su-hyun Lee in Seoul, South Korea, and Yasuko Kamiizumi in Tokyo contributing.
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Human Wave Flees Violence in Zimbabwe

A Zimbabwean woman with her child on her back flees across the border into South Africa at Beitbridge Border Post. (Themba Hadebe/Associated Press)
April 21st. (NY Times) - Sarah Ngewerume was driven to the river by despair. She said she had seen gangs loyal to Zimbabwe’s longtime president, Robert Mugabe, beating people — some to death — in the dusty roads of her village. She said Mugabe loyalists were sweeping the countryside with chunks of wood in their hands, demanding to see party identification cards and methodically hunting down opposition supporters. “It was terrifying,” said Ms. Ngewerume, a 49-year-old former shopkeeper. Last week she waded across the Limpopo River, bribed a man fixing a border fence on the other side and slipped into a nearby South African farm. She was among the latest desperate arrivals in what South Africa’s biggest daily newspaper is calling “Mugabe’s Tsunami,” a wave of more than 1,000 people every day who are fleeing Zimbabwe across the Limpopo to escape into South Africa. When a shallow, glassy river and a few coils of razor wire are the only things separating one of Africa’s most developed countries from one of its most miserable, the inevitable result is millions of illegal border jumpers. But South African and Zimbabwean human rights groups say that the flow of people into South Africa has been surging in the three weeks since Zimbabwe’s disputed election and during the violent crackdown that followed. One Zimbabwean named Washington, who goes back and forth across the border ferrying Super Sure cake flour and Blazing Beef potato snacks, said the government was now using food as a weapon and channeling much of the UN-donated grain to supporters of the ruling party.“As we speak,” he said, “people are starving.” He seemed more defeated than anything else. “People hate the government,” he said. “But they are too scared to fight it.” Commercials are now running on Zimbabwean TV showing grainy images of captives from the liberation war in the 1970s and reminding citizens not to disobey their leaders, recent arrivals said.

In the past, countless Zimbabwean men escaped to South Africa to drive cabs or work on construction sites and send money home. But these days, many of the Zimbabweans fleeing are women and children willing to take considerable risks to get out for good. “We were hoping for change and waiting to see what would happen in the election,” said Faithi Mano, one of more than a dozen Zimbabweans interviewed after they had crossed the border last week. “Now, I have decided to quit that place.” It does not look as if Mr. Mugabe, an 84-year-old liberation hero who has ruled Zimbabwe for 28 years, will leave office without a fight. After early election results from the March 29 vote indicated he was losing to the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the election commission put the brakes on announcing results. The presidential results still have not been released, and a recount begun Saturday in 23 Parliament races is now threatening to drag things out further — the opposition has deemed it “illegal.” If there is a runoff between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai, many fear it could get even bloodier. Human Rights Watch issued a report on Saturday saying members of Mr. Mugabe’s party were running “torture camps” where they took opposition supporters for nightly beatings. On Sunday, the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said more than 400 supporters had been arrested, 500 attacked, 10 killed and 3,000 families displaced. The party released a detailed, day-by-day chronicle of violence that listed huts being burned, people getting cracked in the head with bottles and farms being invaded. The party blamed Mugabe supporters and sometimes government soldiers.

The government has denied any wrongdoing and accused opposition leaders of treason. Mr. Tsvangirai has said it is too dangerous for him to stay in Zimbabwe and has been spending time in South Africa. The border between South Africa and Zimbabwe stretches about 150 miles, and it is headache-hot out here. “Beware of crocodile” signs shimmer in the sun, the grass is yellow and crisp, and at night, the trees churn with clouds of heat-crazed insects. For the people who make it through, there is a pipeline of sympathy waiting on the other side. Fellow Zimbabweans living in South Africa — often perfect strangers — have taken in border jumpers, giving them a safe house and a warm cup of porridge, and helping them along their way to Messina, about 10 miles south, and then onward to the bigger cities of Johannesburg and Cape Town. Joyce Dube, director of the Southern African Women’s Institute for Migration Affairs, which tracks the border issue, said the only reason more people were not crossing was the recently beefed-up security on the South African side. “It’s getting tougher to get through,” she said. South African military helicopters thunder over the Limpopo and soldiers prowl the border roads, searching car trunks for human cargo. Crews of men in red jumpsuits drip with sweat as they fix the fences. But it is a cat-and-mouse game. No sooner have they patched a hole than it is punched through again.

The fence runs for miles, a shining metal snake going up and down the tawny hills. It used to be deadly, electrified by a high-voltage current. That was in the 1980s, when South Africa and newly independent Zimbabwe were practically at war. Back then, many people were going the other way, fleeing South Africa’s repressive apartheid government to escape to Zimbabwe. At the time, Zimbabwe was one of Africa’s stars. Mr. Mugabe had turned a relatively small, landlocked country into an economic powerhouse that produced beef, grain and tobacco. “Bob Mugabe was my hero,” said a white Zimbabwean farmer who drove into Messina the other day for supplies. He did not want to give his name because he went on to criticize Mr. Mugabe’s more recent policies and said he was afraid he could be evicted from his farm for doing so. “I know it sounds funny, but it’s true. You have no idea how beautiful Zim was.” Zim is the affectionate nickname for Zimbabwe. But in the late 1990s, Mr. Mugabe felt he needed to deliver on long-promised land reforms, and Britain, the former colonial ruler, was stalling on paying for them. Mr. Mugabe then encouraged blacks to seize white-owned farms. Whites fled, industrialized agriculture crashed, and today the inflation rate is more than 150,000 percent. Supermarkets often have no food, and 80 percent of the people have no jobs.

The Movement for Democratic Change ran on these woes, and in 2002 it nearly won power, though the elections were marred by violence and intimidation. This time there was hope that things would be different. Recent arrivals say that a few weeks before the vote, the bullying suddenly seemed to let up — perhaps, some thought, because the ruling party was sure it would win. But when the first results showed Mr. Mugabe losing badly, the government went silent. There were some talks about Mr. Mugabe stepping aside. Then the crackdown began. Ms. Ngewerume, the escaped former shopkeeper, said opposition supporters in her village in central Zimbabwe became easy targets because they had danced and sung in the streets after early results were tacked up on polling station doors. When the final results did not come, they went into hiding. But the thugs found them anyway, she said. “I can’t see how Mugabe could win again after all this,” she said. But, she added, many opposition supporters probably would not take the chance again to cross “the old man,” as Mr. Mugabe is often called. Ms. Ngewerume was visibly pained just talking politics as she stood under a tree on a farm near the border. “I just want to go there,” she said, stabbing her finger vaguely south, in the direction of Johannesburg. “I’m just struggling to go forward to get something better.
by Mariella Furrer
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Somalia Seeks UN Force to Restore Order

United Nations: April 16th. (Financial Times) - Somalia’s western-backed transitional government on Tuesday appealed for the United Nations to dispatch a multinational force to establish peace and security in the lawless east African state while its factions pursued reconciliation after more than a decade of war. Ali Ahmed Jama, foreign minister, made the call in New York on the eve of a summit called by South Africa, current UN Security Council president, to discuss greater co-operation between the world body and the African Union. “We call on the Security Council to assume its rightful role and replace Amisom [the existing small AU force] with a multinational force,” he said. “We have asked the Security Council to take that decision as soon as possible.” UN troop contributors have been reluctant to become involved in Somalia since US peacekeepers withdrew in 1993 after militias shot down two Black Hawk helicopters and killed 18 US personnel.

However, factors increasing the concerns for stability in the Horn of Africa, including the recent seizure of a French vessel by pirates, have focused attention on how the UN might work to prevent the situation in Somalia worsening. “We live in a globalised world and the linkage is clear,” said Mr Jama. “Many of the tactics we see in Somalia have been imported from Iraq.” Last month Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, UN special envoy for Somalia, appealed to the Security Council to increase its commitment. “I am not asking outside countries to become active for moral or altruistic reasons. They have a clearly mandated responsibility to become involved in a country where there are widespread violations of human rights and humanitarian law.” Although approval for the early dispatch of a UN force looked unlikely, Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, said in a recent report that troop contributors should be ready to send an 8,000-strong force if a broad-based political settlement were reached, rising to 27,000 if security were assured. The larger deployment would allow the withdrawal of Ethiopian forces that entered Somalia more than a year ago to support the transitional government in its war against Islamists.

Mr Jama called reconciliation with opposition groups an ongoing process, although UN officials note progress has been limited. He said that while the transitional government was pledged to negotiate with opposition factions, “the people you see that are killing innocent people are the spoilers who don’t want to see peace and security in Somalia”. The state department last month placed the allegedly al-Qaeda-linked military wing of Somalia’s Council of Islamic Courts on the US list of foreign terrorist organisations. A spokesman for the faction told Associated Press the group welcomed the designation and accused the US of targeting it because it was “fighting against Ethiopia, a Christian nation that had invaded our country”.
By Harvey Morris
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South Africa Joins Call for Release of Zimbabwe Vote

April 18th. (NY Times): - In a change of tone, Sth. Africa urged Zimbabwe's government on Thursday to release results from the disputed March 29 presidential election that has thrown the nation into political crisis. Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president who has acted as a mediator between the opposition and government, had until now largely played down the political stalemate in Zimbabwe and counseled patience in dealing with its autocratic president, Robert Mugabe. But on Thursday, a government spokesman described the situation in Zimbabwe as dire. “When elections are held and results are not released two weeks after, it is obviously of great concern,” the spokesman, Themba Maseko, told reporters. Mr. Maseko was speaking in Cape Town after a cabinet meeting. “South Africa, like the rest of the world, is concerned about the delay in the release of the results and the anxiety that this is generating,” Mr. Maseko said.

Mr. Mbeki has been a strong supporter of Mr. Mugabe, and it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Maseko’s statement Thursday reflected a change of position by Mr. Mbeki himself. But Mr. Mbeki has been under criticism at home and abroad for his insistence on quiet diplomacy in dealing with the crisis in Zimbabwe, where the currency is nearly worthless and the economy has collapsed, bringing shortages of food and fuel and 80 percent unemployment. Millions of people have fled to South Africa, the biggest regional power. Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader in Zimbabwe, insists that he beat Mr. Mugabe outright in the elections, but the governing party says that neither man won and that a runoff may be necessary. Zimbabwe’s Electoral Commission continues to refuse to make the final figures public. In a press conference in Johannesburg on Thursday, Mr. Tsvangirai issued strong criticism of Mr. Mbeki’s role in the crisis, saying that Mr. Mbeki “needs to be relieved from his duty" as chief mediator with the Mugabe government, Reuters reported. At the weekend, Mr. Mbeki flew to Zimbabwe’s capital for a meeting with Mr. Mugabe, after which the two leaders emerged holding hands and Mr. Mbeki declared that he did not think Zimbabwe was facing a political crisis. Despite Mr. Mbeki’s position, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has described the situation in Zimbabwe as “dire.” On Wednesday, Jacob Zuma, the A.N.C. leader, showed apparent widening disagreement with Mr. Mbeki over the country’s troubles. “The region cannot afford a deepening crisis in Zimbabwe,” he said, in a speech to South Africa’s Chambers of Commerce, Reuters reported. Adding to the international expressions of concern, Secretary of Stat e Condoleeza Rice said Thursday that Zimbabwe’s African neighbors had to do more to solve the crisis, as she described Mr. Mugabe’s last few years of rule as an “abomination.”

On Sunday, southern African political leaders in a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, urged Zimbabwe’s government to let representatives of the opposition be present when vote tabulations were verified and to ensure that a presidential runoff, if needed, would be held ”in a secure environment.” Earlier Thursday, Mr. Mugabe’s government accused Mr. Tsvangirai of working with Britain, the former colonial power, to topple Mr. Mugabe, who led Zimbabwe to independence and has been its leader for 28 years. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Wednesday that he was “deeply concerned” by the delay in releasing the election results and said that international observers should monitor any second round of voting. “The credibility of the democratic process in Africa could be at stake here,” Mr. Ban said. Addressing the same meeting, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, said it was obvious that Mr. Mugabe was trying to overturn an election that had gone against him. “No one thinks, having seen the results at polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election,” Mr. Brown said. ”A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all.”
by Graham Bowley
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After Protests, Haitian Leader Announces Rice Subsidies

(Photo Below - Port-au-Prince, Haiti: UN peacekeepers protect the national palace after Haitians stormed the building, throwing stones and demanding the resignation of their president over soaring food prices)
MEXICO CITY: April 13th. (NY Times) — Responding to violent street protests against rising food prices that ground Haiti to a halt over the last week, President Rene Preval announced subsidies on Saturday that he said would cut the cost of rice by more than 15 percent. But the emergency move was not enough to stop Haitian senators from voting to remove Mr. Préval’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, who has been blamed for handling the struggling economy ineptly. The demonstrations had begun in the southern city of Les Cayes and spread across Haiti, drawing tens of thousands of people into the streets, spurring a looting spree and causing five deaths. On Saturday the commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Haiti told reporters that calm was returning to the country. But within hours, a United Nations policeman from Nigeria was pulled from his marked car and killed in Port-au-Prince.

Mr. Préval, a former agronomist who is in his second term as president, met earlier in the day with food importers at the presidential palace and emerged to announce new measures that he said would knock the price of a 50-pound bag of rice from $51 to $43, a nearly 16 percent reduction. In the poorest country in the hemisphere, that discount could mean the difference between eating and going hungry for many destitute families. Rice is a Haitian staple, often mixed in the slums with chicken feet to create a flavorful stew. To reduce prices, Mr. Préval said he would use international aid money combined with commitments from the private sector to reduce profit margins. The vote against Prime Minister Alexis means Mr. Préval must reconstitute his government, which he said he would do promptly. Mr. Alexis had managed to withstand a previous no-confidence vote but this time 16 of the 17 senators voted against him, wire services reported. The tumult is nothing new in Haiti, a fragile country with a history of political turnover that is being held together largely through the presence of the United Nations peacekeeping mission. The Bush administration considers Mr. Préval’s 2006 election and Haiti’s relative stability in recent years to be one of its success stories, although State Department officials caution that the country remains volatile. With the recent demonstrations, the Coast Guard has said it is on the lookout for mass emigration. It is unclear how the president’s move will affect tensions. Even after the United Nations police officer was killed, much of Port-au-Prince seemed largely tranquil. But in the clothing market where the police officer was killed, other peacekeepers took up positions as several stalls on both sides of the street smoldered after being set on fire, The Associated Press reported. The police officer had been driving a marked United Nations vehicle in the crowded market when he was killed. Witnesses told The A.P. that other Nigerian police officers later fired tear gas and warning shots to disperse the crowd before recovering the slain man’s body. Soon after, the market stalls could be seen burning.

Rising food prices are a global concern, with some estimates putting the increase as high as 40 percent since mid-2007. In Haiti, though, where the bulk of the population lives on less than $2 a day, the effects have been especially acute. In one slum of Port-au-Prince, a woman sat before a large pot of chicken feet and water recently, selling stew without rice. She said the rice was too costly.
by Marc Lacey
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Dalai Lama Says His Aides Are Talking to China

The Dalai Lama at a news conference in Seattle. He said it was unclear what talks with Chinese officials over Tibet might yield. Photo by Robert Sorbo/Reuters
SEATTLE: April 14th. (NY Times) — The Dalai Lama said Sunday that “some efforts” at diplomacy were under way between his representatives and those of the Chinese government even as officials in Beijing continue to portray him as having orchestrated protests in Tibet that have led to a crackdown and violence there. The Dalai Lama at a news conference in Seattle. He said it was unclear what talks with Chinese officials over Tibet might yield. Just a few days these are going on,” the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, said of the discussions. He said it was unclear what the talks might yield. He would not say specifically what matters were being discussed, and he said he had not been directly involved in the conversations.

Western leaders have encouraged China to resume discussions with the Dalai Lama in the wake of the unrest in Tibet, which began on March 10. As recently as Saturday, President Hu Jintao echoed other Chinese leaders who have accused the Dalai Lama of encouraging violence. Mr. Hu left open the door for dialogue but only if “the Dalai side stops activities splitting the motherland, stops activities scheming and instigating violence, and stops activities sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games,” according to Xinhua, the government’s official news agency. The Dalai Lama, who is in Seattle for a conference, told reporters on Sunday that he was unaware of the comments by Mr. Hu and, as he has done repeatedly, denied that he had played any role in the violence. He noted that he had also been criticized by some Tibetans who have said his strategy of nonviolence has produced little change. He rejected the suggestion that Tibetan leaders might make concessions to engage in more extensive dialogue with China. “We’ve become refugees,” he said, adding that Tibetans had little left to concede.

Asked whether he would accept an invitation to the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, he laughed and said he did not expect to receive one. More important, he said, was for China to take steps to earn the international respect and trust it hopes the Olympics will help nurture. As part of doing this, he said, China should release Tibetans arrested since the protests began and provide those injured with proper medical care. He also said China should open Tibet to the news media. “Let them go there, see the actual situation,” he said. He restated positions he has made clear in the past: that he does not seek independence for Tibet but what he calls a more genuine autonomy and that he is eager for the Chinese people to know that Tibetans are neither anti-Chinese nor opposed to the Beijing Olympics. He said he met with a Chinese media agency here on Saturday with the hope of sending those messages directly to the Chinese people. He said he believed that the idea of a “harmonious society” promoted by Mr. Hu showed that the governing Communist Party was “in a state of transformation,” even as the Chinese government continues to distort information and manipulate its people. He said some Chinese officials were demanding that Tibetans put their thumbprints on statements saying they did not want the Dalai Lama to return.

The Dalai Lama has been leading a five-day conference, called Seeds of Compassion, that is focused on nurturing compassion in young children. The event was planned many months before the unrest began in Tibet, and the Dalai Lama had avoided directly discussing the troubles until Sunday, the third day of the conference.
by William Yardley
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Unity Cabinet Formed in Kenya, Ending Deadlock

President Mwai Kibaki, right, and the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, left, at the announcement of the new cabinet on Sunday in Nairobi. (Antony Njuguna/Reuters)

NAIROBI, Kenya: April 14th. (NY Times) — President Mwai Kibaki announced a new — and enormous — national unity cabinet here on Sunday, ending weeks of anxious deadlock that had threatened to plunge Kenya back into violence. Allies of Mr. Kibaki, who was declared the winner of a deeply flawed election in December, retained the most powerful ministries, like finance and foreign affairs, but the leading opposition party managed to get some major posts, including local government and agriculture. And as anticipated, the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, who claims to have won the presidential vote, was appointed prime minister. The two sides were under mounting pressure from foreign governments, especially the United States, and from Kenyans to strike a deal that would end the bitter, and often dangerous, atmosphere that has hung over the country since December. While the voting itself went peacefully, the country exploded in violence afterward with supporters of the government and of the opposition raging against each other. More than 1,000 people were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced and Kenya’s image as one of Africa’s most stable and promising countries was seriously damaged.

In late February, the government and the opposition agreed to share power, but they haggled over who would be selected for each post. On Sunday, it took Mr. Kibaki more than 10 minutes to read aloud the list of ministers and assistant ministers, totaling 94 people, nearly half of Parliament. It is the biggest cabinet Kenya has ever had. Because of all the politicking and the need to placate various interest groups, Mr. Kibaki has created several new, highly paid positions, like the minister of development of northern Kenya and other arid lands. Trade organizations and human rights groups have roundly criticized adding those positions as inefficient and wasteful, especially when thousands of displaced Kenyans are still living in tents. Mr. Kibaki defended the expanded cabinet as crucial for Kenya’s development. “Let us put politics aside and get to work,” he said in a televised address on Sunday. “Let us build a new Kenya where justice is our shield and defender, and where peace, liberty and plenty will be found throughout our country.” The opposition party said it was disappointed that it had not gotten as many powerful positions as it wanted. “But we decided that it was more important to get a government in place,” said Salim Lone, Mr. Odinga’s spokesman. “There was too much chaos and hunger and restlessness in the country.”

Opposition supporters who said they were angry about the delay in forming a cabinet rioted in several towns across Kenya last week, and Mr. Lone credited that outburst with moving the process along. “The international pressure had been there for some time, and the riots really focused our minds on how fragile things were,” he said. Mr. Lone said the deal was sealed in a secret seven-hour meeting on Saturday between Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga. The cabinet faces a mountain of challenges and needs. Kenya, after all, is a relatively poor country, with a fast-growing population, exploding slums and diminishing available land. In addition, the election stirred long-simmering grievances, which violently split many parts of the country down ethnic lines. There was also direct economic damage from the fighting, with countless homes, businesses, factories and schools burned to the ground, investor confidence low and Kenya’s fabled safari business on its knees. So it is no surprise that many Kenyans doubt that the cabinet deal will be a cure-all. While jubilation greeted the power-sharing agreement in February, with crowds cheering in the streets, this time the mood was more muted and even skeptical. “I don’t see this lasting long,” said Wambua Kilonzo, a lawyer in Nairobi, the capital. “There’s been too much bad blood already. Everything that has been done so far has only been done by the force of the arm.” What seemed to irk people most was the size of the cabinet. “We have been duped,” said Simoni Birundu, national chairman of the Name and Shame Corruption Networks Campaign, a nonprofit group. “We needed a lean cabinet so that it does not consume all our national resources.”

Maina Kiai, chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rightes, called the bloated cabinet “an insult. The politicians are not interested in us,” he said. “They’re interested in themselves. We go begging for money from other countries to feed our children. And then we use our taxpayers’ money to buy big houses and limousines. Here we are talking about a new Kenya. But instead of going forward, we’re going backward.”
By Jeffrey Gettleman and Kennedy Abwao contributed reporting.
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Zimbabwe Court Refuses to Release Vote Results

George Chikumbirike, a lawyer for Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission, left the High Court in Harare on Monday after he won the government's case.
JOHANNESBURG: April 15th. (NY Times) - Zimbabwe's political opposition suffered a rebuff on Monday when the country’s High Court dismissed its demand that the results of last month’s presidential election be released immediately. A spokesman for the main opposition party, Nqobizitha Mlilo, confirmed that the court had dismissed its demand, and said the party was still considering how it would react to the ruling. The opposition had already threatened to hold a general strike this week. Zimbabwean election officials have yet to announce the winner of the presidential election, held March 29, causing widespread suspicions that President Robert Mugabe, who has been president since the country won its independence 28 years ago, is refusing to accept defeat. On Tuesday, the court is to consider a separate petition from Mr. Mugabe’s party, known as ZANU-PF, which is seeking a recount of the vote in 23 parliamentary constituencies. Official results in the March 29 election gave the opposition party more than half of the 210 seats in Parliament, but a recount of those districts could swing the majority back into the governing party’s column.

The ruling by the court Monday is a setback for opposition officials in their battle to unseat Mr. Mugabe. On Sunday, they savored support they had gained from southern African political leaders. The leaders of a 14-nation bloc gathered in Lusaka, Zambia, for 12 consecutive hours of talks on Zimbabwe’s political impasse, ending at 5 a.m. on Sunday. The bloc, the Southern African Development Community, announced that it was urging Zimbabwe’s government to let representatives of the opposition be present when vote tabulations were verified and to ensure that a presidential runoff, if needed, would be held “in a secure environment.” Election monitors and opposition candidates have said they were denied access to the vote-counting command center. They have also charged that Mr. Mugabe’s party has organized youth militias and veterans of the independence struggle to attack the opposition’s supporters.

On Friday, the ruling party tightened its control over the beleaguered country by banning political rallies, continuing its crackdown on the opposition and arresting the lawyer of its chief rival, Morgan Tsvangari, the opposition leader. In the past, the regional leaders have been accused of being overly deferential to Mr. Mugabe. And little had been expected to come out of the conference after a powerful leader in the bloc, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, flew first to Zimbabwe’s capital to meet with Mr. Mugabe. They emerged holding hands, and Mr. Mbeki blandly declared that he did not think Zimbabwe was facing a political crisis. The No. 2 man in Mr. Tsvangirai’s party, Tendai Biti, praised the African leaders, saying, “This is a major improvement, and S.A.D.C. has acquitted itself relatively well.” His praise was noteworthy because before the meeting began, Mr. Biti, a labor lawyer, had said its outcome would be a test of whether the bloc was anything more than what he called a trade union for dictators.
Celia W. Dugger reported from Johannesburg and Graham Bowley from New York.
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
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