Tag: GreatLakesNews

Tanzania says it is confident that a decision by three former leaders from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) region to form a panel for mediating in the Lake Nyasa border dispute with Malawi will resolve the conflict amicably once and for all.

“We are ready to be open and assist the panel in whatever way they want us to do, including providing information, documents and physical presence of ourselves to testify before the panel,” said the minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Bernard Membe, yesterday.

On Monday, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and Festus Mogae of Botswana were reported as saying that they would form a panel to mediate in the long-standing border dispute.

The revelation has come barely a week after Tanzania submitted its position on the dispute to the forum of former African heads of state and governments, currently being chaired by Mr Chissano.

Malawi’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation principal secretary Patrick Kabambe said on Monday, the forum proposed that the mediation process would be done by a panel of three former presidents.

Mr Kabambe, who also confirmed that Malawi was informed that Tanzania has made its submission, said the two countries would now be waiting to hear from the forum on the way forward.

He said the agreement was that after the submissions the process should start before the end of February.

Tanzanian High Commissioner to Malawi, Ambassador Patrick Tsere, confirmed that his country has submitted the documents, but the process was now ‘entirely’ in the hands of the mediators for the way forward.

Tanzania and Malawi submitted letters of application to Mr Chissano in December requesting the forum to mediate the border dispute. This was after the two countries failed to reach a consensus.

Reacting to the latest developments yesterday, Mr Membe said the fact that former SADC leaders were willing to mediate in the dispute showed that the matter could be resolved within the region.

“This panel is our destination because we are putting trust on it…and it is not a transit to the International Court of Justice,” he said in reference to earlier proposals that the matter should referred to the ICJ for arbitration.

“It is fair and a pride for SADC if this matter can be resolved by its leaders,” added Mr Membe when reached by phone.

Malawi submitted its position on the disputed Lake Nyasa at the end of January, 2013, meeting the deadline of January 31.

In the dispute, Malawi is claiming ownership of the entire northern part of Lake Malawi, citing the Heligoland Treaty of 1890 between Britain and Germany. Malawi was then under British rule while Tanganyika was a German colony.

On the other hand, Tanzania wants a partition drawn in the middle of the lake, stressing that this is the practice among countries which share water bodies.

The dispute, which is said to be historical, was re-ignited recently following the revelations that the lake is rich with minerals, including oil.

Mid-last month, President Jakaya Kikwete and the chairman of the African Union, Benin President Boni Yayi, discussed the Malawi border dispute during their meeting in Dar es Salaam.

President Yayi commended President Kikwete for pursuing diplomatic means in resolving the dispute that had persisted for decades.

While Malawi maintains that it owns the entire northern portion of Lake Nyasa, Tanzania wants the border to be in the middle of the lake.

Citizen

Regional African leaders have signed a UN-brokered accord which aims to bring peace to the troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The deal was signed in the presence of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

He said he hoped it would bring “an era of peace and stability” to the region.

As many as 800,000 people have been displaced since the March 23 rebel group took up arms against the Kinshasa government last May.

“It is only the beginning of a comprehensive approach that will require sustained engagement,” Mr Ban said.

The agreement, signed by leaders and representatives of 11 countries of the Great Lakes region, may lead to the establishment of a special UN intervention brigade in eastern Congo, along with political efforts to bring peace.

An initial attempt to get the peace agreement signed last month was called off at the last minute.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has echoed President Barrack Obama’s call for fair, peaceful elections.

The State Department said on Saturday that Kerry had made a phone call to President Mwai Kibaki reiterating that the forthcoming election provides the opportunity for Kenyans to come together.

“Spoke with President Kibaki – echoed POTUS (President of the US) message: Now is time for Kenya to come together, free, fair, credible election with no violence,” read a post on the Department of State twitter account @Statedpt.

Earlier in February President Obama insisted that his country will not endorse any presidential candidate, in the forthcoming election.

Obama urged Kenyans to avoid mistakes which could lead to violent incidents like the one witnessed after the disputed 2007 election.

“The choice of who will lead Kenya is up to the Kenyan people. The United States does not endorse any candidate for office, but we do support an election that is peaceful and reflects the will of the people,” Obama said.

Obama further challenged Kenyans to shun tribal and divisive politics saying it was the only way the country would achieve growth and prosperity.

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson has however appeared to contradict the stand taken by Obama cautioning that the choice of president ‘would have global consequences.”

Speaking from Washington via video link with reporters at the United States embassy in Nairobi, Carson had warned that as much as the general election was a Kenyan affair, its outcome will have implications since a president “must work with the international community.”

Eastern DRCongo is again on the brink of a major conflict, a senior UN official warned as he urged the UN Security Council to urgently approve plans for a peace enforcement unit to combat armed rebel groups.

Roger Meece, head of the UN mission in Congo known as MONUSCO, told the Security Council that the creation of a peace enforcement unit within the peacekeeping force – which would be a new move for the UN – was an “urgently needed and important response to the existing situation on the ground”.

Peace enforcement missions allow the use of lethal force in serious combat situations, while peacekeeping operations are intended to support and monitor an already existing ceasefire, diplomats and UN officials say.

The Congolese government has reached an uneasy truce in eastern Congo with M23 rebels and Uganda is now hosting peace talks, but Meece warned of “increased fears and rumours in the area of an imminent resumption of large-scale military actions”.

wirestory

A Somali terror leader implored his fellow countryman in California to send money ‘to finance jihad,” triggering a chain of events that ended with four convictions.

U.S. government agents recorded dozens of such calls a few years ago, according to the Department of Justice.

And on Friday, a jury found four Somali nationals guilty of supporting terrorism in their native country.

The verdict came after prosecutors played the recordings to jurors in a San Diego federal court during weeks of trial.

The four, who included an imam and a cab driver, had raised $10,000 and wired it to the Islamist terrorist group Al-Shabaab, according to the original indictment.

Cab driver Basaaly Saeed Moalin had many phone conversations with former Al-Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayrow, before a U.S. missile strike ended the latter’s life in May 2008.

Investigators from the FBI, Homeland Security and a San Diego anti-terror agency recorded dozens of them.

Federal prosecutors filed charges in November 2011. The group pleaded not guilty. But the recordings convinced the jurors otherwise.

The money wasn’t coming fast enough for Ayrow, who implored Moalin in at least one recorded call to hurry it up.

“You are running late with the stuff,” Ayrow told him. “Send some, and something will happen.”

Ayrow pushed the cab driver to get his local imam to come up with some funds.

Mohamed Mohamed Mohamud ran the City Heights mosque in San Diego, which many in the Somali community attended.

Together with a second cab driver, Ahmed Nasiri Taalil Mohamud, and an employee at a money transfer company, Issa Doreh, they raised the cash and wired it to Al-Shabaab , the Justice Department said.

It wasn’t the only favor Moalin did for the terror group.

Moalin had kept a house in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, one of the world’s most embattled cities at the time.

He offered to let the terrorists use it, the Department of Justice said.

“After you bury your stuff deep in the ground, you would, then, plant trees on top,” Moalin told Ayrow in a recorded conversation.

Prosecutors argued he was “offering a place to hide weapons.”

For months, they talked about “bullets, bombing and Jihad,” said U. S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy.

After hearing the recordings, the jury no longer bought the defendants’ explanation that they “were actually conversations about their charitable efforts for orphans and schools,” she said.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 16.

Al-Shabaab is one of about 50 groups that have been designated by the State Department as foreign terrorist organizations.

The Islamist extremists have been waging a war against Somalia’s government in an effort to implement a stricter form of Islamic law, or sharia.

In recent years, Somali and African Union troops, who have received funding from the U.S. government, have won many battles against the terror group, pushing it back to a handful of strongholds.

For more than 20 years, Somalia did not have a stable government, and fighting between the rebels and government troops added to the impoverished east African nation’s humanitarian crisis.

In January, the United States granted official recognition to the Somali government in Mogadishu.

wirestory

Somalis aided by human traffickers are using fake passports to board the Mogadishu-to-Istanbul flight as a way to flee to Europe, a Somali official and Turkish Airlines said.

Turkish Airline last year became the first international airline to fly direct to Mogadishu after two decades of conflict isolated the East African nation.

Somalia’s government said that Somali asylum seekers are using fake passports that belong to Somali-Europeans smuggling networks to get to Europe by flying out of the country on Turkish Airlines.

“After the city got some stability, human traffickers returned with scams,” said Gen. Abdullahi Gafow Mohamud, Somalia’s immigration and naturalization department chief.

“The problem increased when Turkish Airlines started operating here. Somalis in Europe are increasingly using fake passports to smuggle people illegally into Europe.”

Mohamud said Somali officials caught three people using fake passports last week. He accused Somalis in Europe of being part of the scam. Residents in Somalia pay thousands of dollars for the use of the false passports.

“They look for people with similar features, so that they give their passports to them to assist the person to get to Europe unnoticed. We can’t ignore it anymore,” he said.

Mohamud showed reporters bundles of fake passports he said were used by human traffickers.

Turkish Airlines confirmed that such scams are happening. Merve Oruc, a spokesman for the airline, said in an email that the airline is experiencing “some problems” with fake passports.

AP