Tag: GreatLakesNews

{{Kenya’s parliament on Thursday passed a motion to withdraw from the International Criminal Court just before the country’s president and deputy president face trial at The Hague for allegedly orchestrating postelection violence more than five years ago.}}

Citing the fact that the United States and other world powers are not members, the majority leader of Kenya’s parliament on Thursday argued that Kenya should withdraw from the statute that created the ICC.

Adan Duale told a special session of Kenya’s parliament that U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both argued against the United States becoming a party to the Rome Statute, which regulates prosecutions for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

A voice vote on the motion easily passed after members of the opposition party walked out, but Kenya can only withdraw from the ICC by formal notification to the United Nations Secretary-General by the government, not parliament.

Clinton and Bush, Duale said, refused to join the ICC in order to protect U.S. citizens and soldiers from potential politically-motivated prosecutions.

“Let us protect our citizens. Let us defend the sovereignty of the nation of Kenya,” Duale said.

The Kenyan debate is a reaction to the start next week of the trial at The Hague of Deputy President William Ruto. Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta face charges of crimes against humanity for allegedly helping to orchestrate postelection violence in 2007-08 that killed more than 1,000 people.

Kenyatta, who was elected president earlier this year, faces trial in November. Both leaders have said they will cooperate with the court.

Parliament has voted to withdraw before, but the executive branch took no action. The Rome Statute says a “state party” may withdraw with written notification to the U.N.’s secretary-general; withdrawal takes effect one year later.

A withdrawal does not affect a state’s obligation to cooperate with criminal investigations and proceedings already underway. If Kenya were to withdraw, it would be the first nation to do so.

agencies

{{African leaders trying to end an 18-month-old uprising in Congo called on Thursday for stalled talks between the government and eastern rebels to restart within three days.}}

Democratic Republic of Congo’s government and M23 rebels began Ugandan-hosted talks after the rebels briefly seized the city of Goma late last year. However, negotiations have stalled and heavy fighting has resumed in recent weeks.

Congo’s army, backed by a new U.N. intervention brigade, with a tough mandate to crush armed groups, has beaten back rebels from positions in the hills overlooking Goma but it has not extended gains deep into M23 territory.

The next round of discussions should last for a maximum of 14 days “during which maximum restraint must be exercised on the ground to allow for talks to conclude,” mediating heads of state from the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) said in a joint statement.

The communiqué did not say what steps regional leaders would take if their appeal was not met.

Congo’s government was not immediately available for comment but talks with the rebels are unpopular in Congo, where residents are tired of years of fighting. Kinshasa has in the past called for the rebels to disarm ahead of any talks.

The rebels have said an interim deal signed in Ethiopia last year entitled them to retake positions they occupied before being driven back by U.N.-backed government troops last week.

“If there is no solution from a dialogue then we have the right to take (Kibati) back,” rebel chief Bertrand Bisimwa told Reuters, referring to a hilltop town overlooking Goma.

M23 took up arms last year accusing Kinshasa of reneging on the terms of a 2009 deal to end a previous uprising.

Tensions have been fuelled by accusations by U.N. experts that Rwanda is backing the rebels. Kigali denies supporting M23 but last week threatened to send its army into Congo after it accused its neighbor of shelling its territory.

Millions of people have died from violence, disease and hunger since the 1990s as foreign-backed ethnic rebel groups have fought for control of eastern Congo’s rich deposits of gold, diamonds and tin, destabilizing the Great Lakes region.

agencies

{{Nominations for the 10th annual Channel O Africa Music Awards (#CHOAMVA) were announced Tuesday, revealing 2013 was a year for Africa’s young rising stars.}}

From all over the continent, some of the nominees of the 14 categories even received double nominations.

Kenyan artists grabbed 8 nods, whilst music powerhouse Nigeria received a whopping 20 nominations.

Set to take place in South Africa’s Kliptown Soweto on Saturday November 30th at Walter Sisulu Square, the 10th annual Channel O Africa Music Video Awards will be broadcasted live to millions of fans, across the globe.

How you can vote for your favourite artist:Web and WAP: www.channelo.tv

MOST GIFTED NEWCOMER VIDEO: VICTORIA KIMANI – Mtoto

MOST GIFTED FEMALE VIDEO: STL – Stella Stella Stella

MOST GIFTED RAGGA/DANCEHALL VIDEO: P-UNIT FT COLLO – You Guy (Dat Dendai)

MOST GIFTED R&B VIDEO: VICTORIA KIMANI/M.I – Oya

MOST GIFED AFRO POP VIDEO: SAUTI SOL – Money Lover

MOST GIFTED AFRICAN (EAST) VIDEO: P-UNIT FT COLLO: You Guy (Dat Dendai)

SAUTI SOL – Money Lover

MOST GIFTED DUO/GROUP FEATURING VIDEO: XTATIC/AKA & PRIDDY UGLY -Hit Em Up

{capitalFM}

{{Five regional Heads of State of Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda are meeting in Kampala (Thursday) in an emergency meeting to find solutions to the fighting in eastern DR Congo.}}

The emergency meeting comes a month after the Heads of State met in Nairobi to discuss the situation in eastern DRC following renewed fighting that has resulted in the death of UN soldiers serving under the intervention brigade.

The meeting will consider the need for a cessation of hostilities to allow resumption and conclusion of peace negotiations between M23 and DRC Government, taking place in Kampala.

The meeting for ministers called for the urgent implementation of the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework Agreement for DR Congo and the region.

{{Newly crowned Big Brother Africa: The Chase winner Namibia’s Dillish recently learned of her retired Kenyan soldier father, Abdi Guyo, and that she hails from the Borana ethnic group in Northern Kenya.}}

Creating a media frenzy, the topic of who and where Dillish’s biological father resided became scrutinized by the media in the past few days.

A week after Dillish took home the grand prize of USD $300,000, the winner and her family revealed that the Namibian beauty was on a mission to find her real father.

According to NewVision, in a Google hangout organized by the Kenyan Embassy in Namibia, Selma, Dillish’s mother and biological father Abdi, were able to talk to each other for the first time in close to 23 years.

According to reports, Dillish has invited her newly reunited biological father to her 23rd birthday party in Namibia, to be held on the 16th of September.

CapitalFM

{{Darfur joint peace mediator Mohamed Ibn Chambas briefed Qatari officials about the outcome of a consultations meeting held with the holdout rebel groups in western Sudan last August.}}

Chambas met in Doha with deputy prime minister Ahmed bin Abdullah Al-Mahmoud on Tuesday to inform him about the conclusions of a meeting he organised in Arusha, northern Tanzania, from 22 to 27 August with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Movement of Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM).

Qatar, which sponsors the Doha process to end the 10-year conflict, host the talks since 2009 when the African Union and the Arab League agreed conjugate their efforts for peace in the Sudanese region and accepted the Qatari offer to facilitate the process.

After two years of talks involving JEM and Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), the latter signed a peace agreement with Khartoum after adhering to the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD), a framework text endorsed by Darfur stakeholders, LJM and Sudanese government.

At the time, JEM refused the DDPD but proposed to consider it as basis for further talks.

During Arusha meeting, the rebels said they want a comprehensive process including another rebel group, SPLM-N which fights in Blue Nile and South Kordofan, and opposition parties.

They said negotiations should also focus on the reestablishment of a democratic regime after 24 years of rule by the president Omer Al-Bashir and his Islamist National Congress Party (NCP).

The mediator and the two rebel groups agreed to meet with 60 days.

It is not clear if the rebel SLM led by Abdel Wahid Nur would join them in this second encounter.

The group refused to take part in the first meeting as it insisted that all members of the rebel coalition Sudanese Revolutionary Front should be invited.

Khartoum refused the outcome of the consultations, adding it gave the new mediator an opportunity to understand the positions of non-signatory groups.

The holistic process is supported by certain Western countries, however the African Union and the UN Security Council reiterated last month their support to the two separate processes for Darfur and the Two Areas.

The while the rebels want that this holistic process includes a transitional period ending the NCP rule, the other approach propose to sign peace agreements first and to hold a constitutional conference after.

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{{An oil prospecting firm in Turkana County’s Lokichar basin has announced a five-fold increase in its estimates of oil reserves in the area.}}

Africa Oil, a Canadian oil and gas company firm prospecting together with British explorer Tullow Oil plc, on Tuesday said that results from tests conducted over the past one year showed that the South Lokichar basin contained 368 million barrels of oil, an increase of 557 per cent from the previous estimates.

“This level of resource exceeds the threshold for commercial development,” Mr Keith Hill, Africa Oil’s president and chief executive officer, said on Tuesday.

The tests were conducted by independent consultants Gaffney Cline on behalf of Africa Oil. The results show estimates as at the end of July this year.

The announcement comes just a month after Tullow announced in its half-year report for 2013 that Kenya’s oil resources meet the threshold for commercial exploitation, raising hopes of Kenya joining the league of oil producing nations.

{{Minimum Wells}}

However, the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum has insisted that oil exploration companies should drill a certain minimum number of wells, which in most oil producing countries are more than 40, before the country’s potential for oil production can be assessed.

In addition to these estimates, Africa Oil has indicated that it believes the Lokichar basin contains a total of 20.1 billion barrels of oil.

Africa Oil has interest in six areas which are run jointly with other oil exploration companies where Tullow Oil plc has discovered oil deposits.

NMG

{{The M23 rebels have pulled back from Goma, the flashpoint at the heart of the conflict ravaging eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but the city still faces bombed-out schools, a stalled economy and a climate of fear.}}

Residents welcomed news this week that the M23 army mutineers, whose 16-month rebellion has terrorised the area, had retreated from their positions in the hills around Goma in the face of an offensive by the military and a new United Nations combat force.

But life in the city, the capital of the mineral-rich yet chronically unstable province of North Kivu, is hardly back to normal.

The new school year, which was supposed to start Monday, has been pushed back a week because of the chaos created by the estimated one million people in the province who have fled their homes, many taking shelter in local schools.

And Eugene Mutabazi, the assistant director of a secondary school in Goma, said the problems go deeper than that.

One of the two buildings at his school, the Monseigneur Masimango Institute, was hit by a bomb that left just one wall standing, riddled with shrapnel.

The explosion killed a girl and wounded two other people, said Mutabazi.

Many residents were left traumatised by the fighting in and around Goma and the M23 occupation of the city, which the rebels seized for 12 days in November before pulling out under international pressure.

In the most recent fighting, several bombs hit the area, killing 13 people, according to authorities.

Swollen by tens of thousands of displaced people who have fled their homes in the surrounding area, Goma’s population has now reached around one million.

But the army’s new offensive and the arrival of the UN intervention force have raised hopes by pushing the M23 back to around 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the city.

NMG

{{Somalia’s president has escaped unhurt from an ambush on his military-escorted motorcade that the armed group al-Shabaab said it carried out.}}

President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was approaching the port town of Marka, south of the capital Mogadishu, when al-Shabaab rebels said they fired rocket-propelled grenades at the convoy.

Local police commander Abdikadir Mohamed confirmed Tuesday’s attack to the Reuters news agency and said the president arrived safely at Marka, 90 km from the capital. There was no immediate comment from the president’s office.

The attack underscores the apparent ease with which al-Shabaab rebels can infiltrate areas under the control of Somali government forces and African peacekeepers and strike at the heart of government.

They have continued to launch guerrilla-style attacks and kidnappings in the city despite being largely pushed out by Somali and African forces two years ago.

“The president narrowly escaped. We are waiting for his return,” Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, al-Shabaab’s spokesman for military operations, said.

The rebels said they killed several soldiers and destroyed two armoured vehicles from the motorcade that was under escort by African Union and government troops.

Al-Shabaab abandoned Marka and other urban strongholds last year under military pressure from advancing forces loyal to Mogadishu.

Source: Reuters