Author: Théophile Niyitegeka

N Korea seeks extradition in alleged assassination plot

{Pyongyang demands handover of ‘terrorist’ conspirators after saying CIA, South Korea planned to kill leader Kim Jong-un.}

North Korea will seek the extradition of anyone involved in what it says was a CIA-backed plot to kill leader Kim Jung-un last month with a biochemical weapon, a top official says.

Han Song-ryol, the vice foreign minister, called a meeting of foreign diplomats on Thursday in Pyongyang to outline North Korea’s allegation that the CIA and South Korea’s intelligence agency bribed and coerced a North Korean man into joining in the assassination plot, which the North Korean Ministry of State Security has suggested was thwarted.

North Korea’s permanent mission to the UN late on Thursday issued a statement calling the purported plot to kill Kim a “declaration of war”.

It said the aim was to hurt “the mental mainstay that all the Korean people absolutely trust” and “eclipse the eternal sun” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), the country’s official name.

The CIA and the White House declined to comment on the statements. The South Korean intelligence service said the charge was “groundless”.

North Korean state media has been running stories about the plot since last week. The security ministry has vowed to “ferret out” anyone involved in the alleged plot, which it called “state-sponsored terrorism”.

The permanent mission to the UN said the Ministry of State Security has declared that a “Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organisations of the US and South Korea”.

Han took that a step further with the extradition statement.

“According to our law, the Central Public Prosecutor’s Office of the DPRK will use all available methods to start to work to demand the handover of the criminals involved, so as to punish the organisers, conspirators, and followers of this terrible state-sponsored terrorism,” he said.

North Korea claims the primary suspect is a man it has identified only by the ubiquitous surname “Kim”. It says he is a North Korean resident of Pyongyang who worked for a time in the Russian Far East. State media said he was involved in the timber industry in Khabarovsk, which is one of the primary places North Koreans can go overseas to work.

The North further said a South Korean agent named Jo Ki-chol and a “secret agent” named Xu Guanghai, director general of the Qingdao NAZCA Trade Co Ltd, met Kim in Dandong, on North Korea’s border with China, to give him communications equipment and cash. The North also said “a guy surnamed Han” taught Kim how to enlist accomplices.

“These terrorists plotted and planned in detail for the use of biochemical substances, including radioactive and poisonous substances, as the means of assassination,” Vice Minister Han said, reading from a prepared statement.

“These biochemical substances were to be provided with the assistance of the CIA … while the South Korean Intelligence Service was going to provide necessary support and funding for this attempt at assassination on our supreme leader.”

North Korea’s UN mission said the organisers infiltrated “the terrorist” into the country with several pieces of satellite communications equipment so he could be updated “with the operational code of terrorism against the supreme leadership, various terrorist methods of using biochemical substances, ways of bribing and hiring the one who would actually carry out the terrorist act and ways of entering the venue of the event”.

The statement said the organisers also gave him instructions to report on the “creed” of the person who would carry out the attack “and the state of his ‘brainwashing”, and to make sure the preparations were perfect, as there could be a war if it was revealed that South Korea’s intelligence agency backed the operation.

In statements for foreign distribution, North Korea often refers to its leader Kim Jong-un without naming him, instead using the phrase “supreme leadership” or “supreme dignity”.

The last time that Han appeared to brief foreign diplomats in Pyongyang was last December, to present North Korea’s response to the latest round of UN sanctions after its September 2016 nuclear test.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 12, 2017
Miriam Rodriguez who probed daughter’s death is killed

{Officials say Miriam Rodriguez was shot dead by gunman after dedicating life to finding those who have gone missing.}

Gunmen shot and killed a prominent Mexican activist who spent years searching for her missing daughter and organised others to looked for “disappeared” people in the Mexico’s northern state of Tamaulipas, authorities said.

Miriam Rodriguez was shot a number of times on Wednesday and died en route to hospital, local civic society group Citizen Community in Search of the Disappeared in Tamaulipas, a group Rodriguez belonged, said in a statement.

The United Nations human rights office in Mexico condemned the attack and called on the government to ensure that Rodriguez’s murder is “properly investigated … and does not remain in impunity”.

It added that it was “even more chilling” that Rodriguez’s death took place on Mexico’s Mother’s Day, a day it said has in recent years become an emblem of the fight for justice of the disappeared.

Rodriguez began a search for her daughter after she went missing in 2014. She eventually found her remains in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando, according to Citizen Community.

Months later she warned authorities about the perpetrators of the crime, which eventually led to their arrest, the group said in a statement.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission said Rodriguez’s death underscored the government’s failure to keep the public safe and prevent rights violations of people working as human rights advocates.

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios said the state had been protecting Rodriguez, sending police patrols three times a day to her house, following requests from the family.

He added that nine people had been put on trial for her daughter’s kidnapping and murder.

Barrios’ office denied reports that a man blamed by Rodriguez for her daughter’s murder remained free after escaping from prison. The man, who has been charged but not yet tried, was part of a prison break of 29 inmates in March, but was recaptured almost immediately, it said.

{{‘Negligent response’}}

The number of people in Mexico who have disappeared under suspicious circumstances, often related to drug violence, rose to 30,000 by the end of 2016, with Tamaulipas registering 5,563 missing, the highest state total, according to Mexico’s national registry of data on missing persons.

More than 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the past decade.

Amnesty International said in a statement that Mexico has become “a very dangerous place for those who have the courage to devote their lives to search for missing persons.

“The nightmare they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming.”

On Twitter, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca said the government will “not allow the death of Miriam Rodriguez to be another statistic”.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 12, 2017
Facebook blocks scores of pages in Thailand

{Facebook blocks 178 pages deemed unlawful by the Thai criminal court, including some allegedly insulting the monarchy.}

Facebook has blocked access to scores of web pages in Thailand with “inappropriate” content, including some containing alleged insults against the royal family, on the orders of the country’s criminal court.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) told reporters on Thursday that Facebook has restricted local users’ access to 178 out of some 309 pages on the criminal court’s blacklist.

Facebook Thailand will face legal action if it fails to block the remaining 131 pages, the NBTC warned.

The social network giant did not confirm the number of pages it had blocked, but told the DPA news agency that it restricts access to content if it determines that local laws were violated.

Thailand’s criminal court has ordered nearly 7,000 “inappropriate” web pages be shut down since 2015, according to the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society,

Under Thailand’s lese majeste or royal insult law, criticism of the royal family is an offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Internet service providers are able to block access to most pages, but said some 600 could not be shut down because of encryption. More than half of these were on Facebook.

READ MORE: Thai lawyer faces 150 years in jail for royal insult

The UN Human Rights Council declared access to the internet to be a human right in July 2016.

David Kaye, the UN’s rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression has also encouraged companies to “push back” when states request a block on web pages.

“They should ask questions so they don’t just do it right off the bat,” he said in an interview with Al Jazeera this week. “They need to make the countries explain themselves at the very least, to mitigate the risk.”

Kaye has previously criticised the Thai authorities for using lese majeste laws “as a political tool to stifle critical speech”.

The military government has cracked down on lese majeste suspects since it took power in May 2014, arresting more than 100 people on charges of insulting or defaming the royal family.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 12, 2017
Anthony Sawina convicted of shooting Somali-Americans

{Anthony Sawina targeted group in Minnesota as they headed to prayers, wounding two, after threatening to ‘kill all’.}

A jury has convicted a white man of attempted murder for shooting and wounding two Somali-American men who were on their way to Ramadan prayers in Minneapolis last year.

Anthony Sawina, 26, of Lauderdale, Minnesota, was found guilty on Thursday on all nine counts he faced, including attempted first-degree murder.

The shooting happened last June in the Dinkytown area near the University of Minnesota.

Sawina, who was with a group of friends, shot and wounded the two men, who were on their way to prayers after playing basketball.

“This was shooting directly at people who were sitting in a car, defenceless,” Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said, according to Minnesota Public Radio (MPR).

“We’re just glad that the driver himself wasn’t hit. Although we understand the bullet went right by his head,” Freeman said, as he told the jurors they had made the right decision.

The victims were among a group of friends, at least one of whom was wearing a traditional robe.

A witness said she heard Sawina call the group “f*****g Muslims”.

CAIR, a US Muslim civil rights group, described the attack as Islamophobic.

Sawina maintained that he fired in self-defence, however he did not call the emergency services at the time of the incident or later to report that he had used his gun in self-defence, according to MPR.

The defence lawyer told jurors that the idea that Sawina planned to try and kill the men was “nuts”.

But Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Patrick Lofton argued that premeditation can happen in a short period of time.

“[Sawina] said, ‘I have a permit to carry and I’m going to kill you all’,” Lofton said.

Sawina is scheduled to be sentenced June 12.

Source:Al Jazeera

May 12, 2017
Parliamentarians demand EU to lift sanctions against Burundi

{The Burundian parliament urges ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly to propose a draft resolution requesting the lifting of sanctions imposed upon Burundi. According to these parliamentarians, the political and security situation has improved significantly.}

Both the upper and lower chambers of the parliament appeal to the EU and the member states to take into account all the achievements of the Burundian government in improving the human rights situation since 26 April 2016.
According to the Burundian parliament, the sanctions imposed on Burundi have greatly affected the population in all areas of life especially in the domains of economy, education and health.

Tatien Sibomana, a member of the opposition party UPRONA, says he does not support the sanctions that victimize the Burundian people. However, UPRONA party denounces the violation of the international conventions and pacts ratified by the Burundian government.

The European Union has decided to impose sanctions against the current government of Burundi accusing it of the violation of Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement. The latter stipulates that any country appealing for aid must meet the principles of democracy and human rights.

“Since the outbreak of the current crisis in April 2015, the EU has assessed the situation in Burundi and found that state institutions have violated Article 96 of the Cotonou Agreement,” Sibomana says.

For him, it will be difficult for Burundian parliamentarians to convince ACP and EU MPs that human rights are respected in Burundi. “The international community has been following closely the crimes and serious violations of human rights that have been committed in Burundi for more than two years,” he says.

This political opponent refers to the reports by the national and international organizations about human rights violations, targeted assassinations, enforced disappearances, torture and arbitrary arrests as well as more than 400,000 Burundians refugees exiled abroad.

Siboman worries that the persistence of these sanctions will only worsen Burundians’ living conditions which were already poor. Sibomana asks Burundi parliamentarians to urge the government to comply with the law before demanding the lifting of those sanctions. “The government has not yet found a solution to the causes of those sanctions,” says Sibomana.

Jean de Dieu Mutabazi, the chairman of RADEBU party accuses the EU of neglecting the efforts made by the government to prosecute coup plotters who attempted to overthrow the democratically elected institutions. “They are responsible for crimes and human rights violations committed in Burundi following the failed coup attempt,” says Mutabazi.

He calls on the EU to be neutral when taking decisions on Burundi. “We have realized that the EU is in favor of coup plotters and the radical opposition of the current government,”

Source:Iwacu

May 12, 2017
DRC’s main opposition rejects Kabila’s new government

{Democratic Republic of Congo’s main opposition party denounced president Joseph Kabila’s newly appointed government under prime minister Bruno Tshibala, which they say undermines a previous agreement.}

Kabila, in power since 2001, struck a deal in December with Congo’s main opposition bloc to stay on after his mandate expired provided he held elections by the end of 2017.

But talks to implement the deal broke down in March when Kabila refused to commit to the bloc’s choice of prime minister.

This is the second nomination of a prime minister. The opposition also rejected the appointment of Congo opposition figure Samy Badibanga, who was named in November last year under a power-sharing deal. The opposition called the nomination a “provocation” at the time.

In the capital Kinshasa, many residents say they are skeptical that the new government will change the current political impasse.

“This so called government is a bad idea. As you know, Kabila does not want to leave power. All these are tactics that are going on around the announcement of Tshibala’s (current prime minister) government or a Badibanga (former prime minister) government. All these are distractions that they are using to stay in power. There is nothing new,” said one resident Theo Tshamala.

“I don’t know how a new government will handle the two biggest problems in just eight months, namely organizing the elections and also tackling the challenges that the people are facing,” added another Kinshasa resident, Jean Claude Mputu.

Despite resistance to Kabila remaining in power, he has successfully co-opted large portions of the opposition.

The new prime minister, Tshibala, named last month, is a former member of the country’s largest opposition party and other opposition leaders received ministerial posts too.

Ruling majority spokesperson Alain Atundu Liongo dismissed the critics, saying that the new government is ready to work with the opposition.

“The ruling majority is invested in the success of this government, especially regarding two major objectives. We need to finish with the process of organising elections as agreed. We also need to insure that the Congolese people live in the best social conditions as well as security for their own well being. We also need to pursue at national level, policies that will improve the country’s economy,” Liongo added.

The roughly 60 ministers and vice-ministers that were named are mainly holdovers from the previous government and key ministries – including foreign affairs, interior, justice and mines – remain in the hands of Kabila loyalists.

Political tensions are high after security forces killed dozens during protests over election delays last year. Worsening militia violence in recent months has also raised fears of a backslide toward the civil wars of the turn of the century that killed millions.

Kabila’s opponents suspect he intends to repeatedly delay elections until he can organise a referendum to let himself stand for a third term.

Kabila denies those accusations, saying the election delays are due to challenges registering millions of voters and budgetary constraints.

“The accord legitimised our institutions, but that’s no longer the case today. All that is happening at the moment is just a distraction, and when the time comes there will be consequences, I can promise you that. As someone who is responsible for UDPS, I can tell you that Kabila is responsible of all of this, because he is behind this. Do not think that other people are behind this, it’s all Kabila,” said the opposition UDPS spokesperson, Augustin Kabuya.

The new government faces a number of stern tests. Congo’s franc currency has lost half its value since last year and authorities are struggling to mobilise the resources needed to hold the election by the end of the year.

It will also enter office amid controversy over the burial of long-time opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in Belgium in February.

His political party, the UDPS, had planned to bury him on Friday (May 12) at its headquarters in the capital, Kinshasa, but the provincial government has rejected the planned site.

“The governor needs to have the courage to tell you the truth. His hands are tied, he cannot make this decision himself. He’s only just a figure in this whole thing. We spoke to the governor. If he was serious in his proposal, why didn’t he condemn his political family when he gave his go ahead to UDPS, while his political family gave another view? Why did he change his mind? He had to find a way to cover up, that’s all we can say right now. Everything that the governor is saying right is just imagined scenarios to please his political family,” said Kabuya.

President of the UDPS’s Brussels wing, Katumba Tchiowa Ngoy told Reuters the party would delay repatriating the body and that it would be brought back in “12 to 15 days.”

Source:Africa News

May 12, 2017
Zimbabwe’s ‘odd couple’ seeking to oust Robert Mugabe

{One is a female former teenage guerrilla fighter who became President Robert Mugabe’s closest ally, the other is a battle-hardened opposition leader often dismissed as a busted flush.}

But, despite their differences, Joice Mujuru and Morgan Tsvangirai are in talks to lead a united opposition alliance to try to unseat Mugabe in Zimbabwe’s much-anticipated election next year.

The president, 93 and increasingly frail, has vowed to stand again to extend his rule, which began in 1980 and has been dominated by economic collapse and political repression.

His ZANU-PF party has a stranglehold on government, the civil service and military, and has a record of election interference and voter intimidation that presents a formidable obstacle for any challenger.

“For us, it is more the merrier in this opposition alliance,” Mujuru told AFP, speaking in the garden of her large house on outskirts of Harare.

“This is a coming-together in great numbers as a democratic force that should give confidence to our people.”

Zimbabwe’s history of violent and fraud-riddled elections has eroded public trust in voting, but the coalition leaders hope a unified alternative to Mugabe will produce a high turnout that would make it harder to rig the result.

“I don’t expect Mugabe to say ‘I am going to create conditions for free and fair elections’,” Tsvangirai, 65, told AFP at his office in a tower block in central Harare.

“We need 80 percent participation, not 40 percent. If there is an overwhelming verdict, there will be no one who will stand in the way of the people.”

DANGEROUS POLITICS

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, knows first-hand the dangers of tangling with Mugabe’s regime.

Since emerging as an anti-government trade unionist in the 1980s, he has often been targeted by the security forces and was brutally assaulted by police in 2007.

He won the most votes in the first-round of the 2008 presidential elections, but poll officials said it was not enough to avoid a run-off against Mugabe.

As ZANU-PF loyalists unleashed a wave of violence, Tsvangirai pulled out of the race and became prime minister in a power-sharing government in which he was widely seen as being outmanoeuvered by Mugabe.

“ZANU-PF has not won recent elections, it has rigged them,” Tsvangirai said.

“Anyone who is interested in ending ZANU-PF should unite, in spite of ideological differences.

“I think she (Mujuru) means well. I mean well. People will realise both of us are committed to the process.”

Many of Tsvangirai’s supporters and anti-Mugabe activists view Mujuru as an untrustworthy opposition voice.

She served for 34 years as a loyal ZANU-PF minister and was a favourite to succeed Mugabe. As a youth, she fought in the war against colonial rule and was famed for shooting down an enemy helicopter.

But in 2014 she was ousted as the country’s vice-president in a purge when Mugabe’s wife Grace accused her of plotting a coup.

After forming the new National People’s Party, 62-year-old Mujuru may draw some support from former ZANU-PF voters, women, the business community — and even disgruntled members of the military.

Seen as a relative moderate within Mugabe’s circle, she recalls working well with Tsvangirai during the 2008 – 2013 power-sharing government.

{{ ‘A game-changer’?}}

“For me, it was a chance of seeing Zimbabweans working together in a more harmonious way,” she said.

“I was one of the very few people who was always receptive to opposition parties.”

The potential of a united opposition was underlined in The Gambia’s election last year when rivals came together to defeat longtime dictator Yahya Jammeh.

A new opposition alliance is also planning to fight in Kenya’s August poll.

The Zimbabwean coalition made significant progress last month by signing up Welshman Ncube, who led a group that split from Tsvangirai’s MDC.

Similar deals are in the works with the People’s Democratic Party, led by the respected former finance minister Tendai Biti, as well as with more than a dozen smaller parties.

Tsvangirai, an avid golfer who is recovering from cancer, appears set to be the coalition’s presidential candidate — with Mujuru likely to offer him her full support.

But critics say his political sway is too narrow to build a truly broad anti-Mugabe movement that would include churches, civil action groups and radical activists behind last year’s surge of street protests.

“There is little doubt that Morgan should be the leader, the issue is on what grounds the support comes from others,” said Ivor Jenkins, of the In Transformation Initiative, a South African pro-democracy group that is aiding talks among the opposition.

“The game-changer might be the realisation that this could be their last chance. If they don’t take it, there are many years of bigger chaos ahead.

Source:AFP

May 12, 2017
South Sudanese refugees flee to Sudan

{South Sudanese refugees are pouring across the border into neighbouring Sudan, seeking safety in the country from which South Sudan seceded a few years ago.}

Sovereignty was achieved in 2011 after 99 per cent of South Sudanese voted to break away from Sudan following a decades-long war for independence.

“It is peculiarly tragic, and a devastating commentary on South Sudan, that hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese are fleeing their independent land to seek sanctuary and sustenance in the lands of their former oppressor,” Sudan expert Dr Alex de Waal commented on Thursday.

More than 375,000 South Sudanese — nearly 90 per cent of them women and children — have fled to Sudan since the outbreak of civil war in 2013. Only Uganda, with 883,000 registered arrivals, hosts more South Sudanese refugees than does Sudan.

{{Increased fighting }}

The flight into Sudan is accelerating, the United Nations refugee agency reported on Thursday.

S.Sudan ‘man-made’ famine could kill 6 million: Charity warns

Some 23,000 South Sudanese crossed into Sudan last month, bringing the total so far this year to 108,000.

The UN estimates that up to 50,000 additional South Sudanese could flee to Sudan in the next month as fighting and hunger intensify in areas near the border.

The UN lacks the resources needed to respond adequately to this mass exodus. A plea for $167 million to care for South Sudanese refugees in Sudan is less than 10 per cent funded, the UN says.

The Khartoum-based Sudan government has been cooperating with efforts to assist refugees from the territory it formerly ruled.

{{Migrants }}

National authorities have also agreed to open three “humanitarian corridors” into South Sudan to enable food and other aid to reach vulnerable civilians more quickly.

Dr de Waal, director of the World Peace Foundation at a US university, predicted that Sudan, despite its “weak” economy, will eventually be able to absorb the growing numbers of South Sudanese refugees.

“They will of course be a strain on local resources where they first arrive,” he said. But Sudan has long experience in employing southern Sudanese migrants, Dr de Waal pointed out.

“They have worked as labourers in agricultural projects, as servants in private houses, in the construction industry and in a variety of low-paid jobs,” he noted.

Source:AFP

May 12, 2017
Kenya:Clergy who revealed secrets of Jomo oaths dies

{The Rev John Gatu, the ex-moderator of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa who spilled the beans on Mau Mau oaths during the Jomo Kenyatta era, is dead aged 92.}

Close family and church sources on Friday confirmed to the Nation that the veteran cleric passed on at The Karen Hospital on Thursday.

{{Heart attack }}

He was admitted to the Nairobi hospital after suffering a heart attack on May 2 at his home.

Dr Gatu will be remembered for his candour in speaking against the excesses of previous governments, especially that of President Daniel Moi.

In late last year, he revealed Mau Mau oath ceremonies in the Mount Kenya region in an explosive autobiography — Fan to Flame — implicating Kenya’s founding President Kenyatta.

His niece, Chebet Karago, eulogied him as “wonderful, kind man who put his faith into action.”

{{Simple life }}

“Uncle was the loving father of many including people from other churches who called him Dad. When my cousin fled the country my aunt and uncle took care of his family and when his driver died, he fostered his children,” she said.

“He lived a simple life in his two bedroom house in Karen. A person who knew his true home was elsewhere with his God.”

Dr Gatu was born on March 3, 1925 to Muthoni and Gachango Gatu.

His wife, Rahabu Gatu, died in 2016.

He was the first African General-Secretary of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa and the past moderator of the 9th and 10th General Assembly.

{{Ecumenist }}

A celebrated ecumenist, he was the founder of the Jitegemee spirit in the PCEA church.

In the 1970s, he introduced the Moratorium Debate that called for a moratorium on foreign aid to African churches to promote growth and self-reliance and this led to him being called by the West a “missionary hater”.

In his autobiography, Fan into Flame, he discuses the origin of the Christian churches in Kenya, the turmoil Kenya went through during the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s.

He is also the author of among other books, Joyfully Christian: Truly African.

{{Wife }}

He wrote many hymns including Ni kii wenakio utaheirwo? He also translated into Kikuyu language hymns such as Do Not Pass Me By.

The clergy studied in among other institutions around the world, the Princeton Theology College in New Jersey.

In all his travels he was always accompanied by his wife, according to his niece.

“He was the first student to take a wife to what is now St Pauls University,” she told Nation.

Source:Daily Nation

May 12, 2017
EU opts for dialogue on contentious EPA deal

{European Union (EU) has invited the government to a dialogue over the contentious Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA).}

Head of EU Delegation to Tanzania and East African Community (EAC) Roeland van de Geer, speaking at a well attended cocktail party to celebrate Europe Day at the Bunge grounds here on Wednesday, said the delegation is open for talks with the government.

He argued that Tanzania as a sovereign state has all the rights to its opinion on EPA, saying the EU was cordially waiting for the official government’s position on the matter. “What is important is that we have dialogue.

You (Tanzania) have your convictions; we (EU) have our convictions, we are all human beings. Tanzania is a sovereign country and should take its own decisions,” he said, underscoring on the importance of the dialogue.

President John Magufuli, addressing a joint press conference with his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Museveni at the State House in Dar es Salaam recently, said that Tanzania was bold over EPA, arguing that there was no need for rushing to sign.

President Museveni too concurred with his host, insisting that East African countries should first focus on issue of best interest of their countries prior to signing. Four EAC member states, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are required to sign the treaty to operationalise EPA.

The deadline for the EAC countries to append their signatures on the trade deal was October 1, 2016 and by that time only Kenya and Rwanda had inked it.

At the gathering that drew many lawmakers in the European Parliament, the National Assembly Deputy Speaker, Dr Tulia Ackson, said the parliament role on EPA was to advise the government on how best to deal with the treaty.

“We have the constitutional duty to advise the government on issues of national importance,’’ she said in her speech, adding that the parliament had advised the government on what was in the country’s interest.

“Practically, the parliament hasn’t said no to EPA but there are issues that have been raised and the parliament will want them ironed out before the government makes its decision,” noted the deputy speaker.

Source:Daily News

May 12, 2017