ANTANANARIVO (Reuters) - Madagascar's leader has vowed to disband his internationally rejected government and form an interim body with an ousted opposition leader following an ultimatum from the army to solve a festering crisis.

Analysts say there has been growing unease in some quarters of the government and military, and increased international pressure on Andry Rajoelina to solve the crisis, which has unnerved investors in the island's oil and mineral resources.

Rajoelina said that he was willing to meet with former President Marc Ravalomanana -- whom the former disc jockey ousted from power with the army's help -- but any deal would not be based on a previous pact brokered in Ethiopia and Mozambique.

"We are going to organise (elections) within three months, or three and a half months at the latest. There is no question of coming back to the Maputo and Addis Ababa accords, but to find out what can be the minimum acceptable to everyone," Rajoelina said on state television late on Wednesday.

"The current government will be dissolved and a new one will be formed ... The Government of National Union will be put in place after a meeting (between Rajoelina and Ravalomanana) which is expected to take place in South Africa."

Rajoelina has repeatedly set election deadlines and missed.

The crisis -- which began last March after weeks of violent protests, triggering a year of leadership squabbles on the world's fourth largest island -- has paralysed economic growth, slashed public spending and pushed up urban unemployment.

A power-sharing deal between Rajoelina, Ravalomanana and two other former presidents were signed last year, but persistent wrangling over who should get the top posts meant the accord was never implemented.

"This meeting (between Rajoelina and Ravalomanana) is the last chance," Rajoelina said.

But exiled former leader Ravalomanana told his supporters from South Africa that the only way forward was to implement the deals reached in Addis Ababa and Maputo.

"Do not think of any meeting if it is not about implementing the Maputo and Addis Ababa accords. These are criticised even though they have not been put in place."

Army chief General Andre Ndriarijoana -- who backed Rajoelina in taking power last year -- and other army bosses have given Rajoelina until the end of April to offer an acceptable way out of the political crisis.

The army did not say what action it would take if Rajoelina failed, but a military takeover cannot be ruled out.

But military arm-twisting will only succeed if the opposition leaders, including Ravalomanana, play their part.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Barefoot children in tattered clothes scramble through the dusty, trash-strewn streets of Dakar, tapping on car windows and shadowing market-goers in the hopes of a few coins or a cup of rice.

The sight of young people begging is not uncommon in a country struggling with deep-rooted poverty, but in the West African state of Senegal there is a twist.

These children are students in the nation's traditional Koranic school system being forced by teachers to panhandle on pain of severe beatings, according to an investigation by global advocacy group Human Rights Watch released on Thursday.

"There are at least 50,000 children just in urban residential daaras (Koranic schools) that are living in conditions akin to slavery," said study author Matt Wells.

"We're talking about quite a serious problem here in Senegal and the numbers are increasing every day," he said of the "talibe", or scholars.

The findings are troublesome in a mainly Muslim nation of 12 million where Koranic schools have existed for centuries, placing Senegal on a list of countries with severe forced child begging such as Pakistan, India, and Albania.

The Senegalese government has passed laws in recent years targeting the problem but has been slow to enforce them amid fear of a backlash led by the politically powerful religious leaders benefiting from the begging, according to a government official quoted anonymously in the report.

"There has been a sense that this issue is too sensitive to touch, but one of the hopes of this report is to push through that," said HRW's Wells.

Minister of Religious Affairs Mamadou Bamba Ndiaye said the state was seeking solutions to forced child begging.

"We don't support the fact that children are being thrown into the streets like this," he told Reuters by telephone.

LEGACY OF STREET CHILDREN

Suleiman can't remember his age, but he knows he was forced to beg for eight years as a talibe in a Dakar-area daara and was beaten repeatedly by his teacher before seeking refuge at a shelter this week.

"He would beat me with an electrical cord," he said. "It was very difficult to collect the money."

Parents in Senegal have been entrusting their children to daaras for centuries, expecting them to receive food, shelter and teachings from the Koran in exchange for their work on communal farms during the harvest.

But forced begging began to emerge in Senegal's daara system in the 1970s when crop failures led schools to move into the cities and boarding students were called upon to panhandle to cover the daara's costs.

Since then, the majority of Senegal's urban daaras have embraced forced begging, Wells said, with some of the religious leaders -- known as marabouts -- making as much as $100,000 per year on the proceeds while cutting back hours in the classroom.

"In a country where people generally live on $2 per day, that is an incredible sum," Wells said.

Human Rights Watch said many of the country's several hundred thousand talibes are forced into the streets to beg for eight hours a day, and are given strict quotas for amounts of money, rice and sugar to be gathered.

If they come up short, they are beaten.

"The child is taken to a room, his shirt is stripped off either by the marabout or a grand talibe, and he is beaten, often brutally," said Wells.

"This has created a legacy of street children in Senegal," said Wells. "Because of the severe abuse they suffer at the hands of the marabout, they run away in huge numbers."

Ousmane Sonko, who runs the Children's Empire shelter in Dakar, said parents sometimes resist taking their children back because they do not believe the marabouts are abusive.

While forced child begging exists elsewhere in the region, the problem is most pronounced in Senegal where alms-giving is an important cultural and religious act, Wells said. As a result, many children are smuggled in from Guinea Bissau, Guinea, and Gambia to beg for daaras in Dakar.

"There are people (in Senegal) to which the tenet of the Islamic faith, zakat, is incredibly important, so it has become easy for these unscrupulous marabouts to make a lucrative gain off the backs of the children," Wells said.

Human Rights Watch said it was calling on the government of Senegal to crack down on forced begging

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan did not rule out contesting elections due next year, but said in an interview aired on Wednesday that he wanted at least three months to see how reforms enacted so far take hold.

Jonathan, who took the reins of Africa's most populous nation two months ago to fill the vacuum left by ailing President Umaru Yar'Adua, said it was too early to discuss his own election plans.

"For now, I don't want to think about it," Jonathan told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

"There are options for me if I want to contest elections. I recontest as a vice president, or anybody. I can contest as a president because the laws allow me. But that is not my own priority now.

"My priority now is to see how within this little period left, what impact can we show?," he said. "If you come back to me in the next three months, I will answer your question straight. I will not hesitate."

Jonathan was speaking during a U.S. visit to take part in a Washington nuclear security summit, his first official trip overseas since becoming Nigeria's interim leader.

PAST MISTAKES

Since taking office, Jonathan has made overhauling the oil producing nation's electoral system a top priority to avoid a repeat of a flawed 2007 poll that brought Yar'Adua to power.

Reform legislation is now before parliament, but time is running out for changes to be implemented before elections, which are due by April 2011.

Former military ruler Ibrahim Babangida on Tuesday became the first major politician to announce a run for president next year, campaigning for a smaller federal government.

Jonathan has quickly asserted his authority in the OPEC-member nation by installing a new cabinet and replacing some of Yar'Adua's key allies.

In a speech in Washington, he said he would continue to get tough on corruption, including the notorious "419" Internet scams he said were tarnishing Nigeria's image.

"A businessman doesn't really know who to talk to," Jonathan said, although he added that the victims in these scams were often largely to blame themselves.

"Sometimes people are very greedy, and it is very easy to dupe a greedy person," he said.

Jonathan He said he had not seen or spoken to Yar'Adua since the latter returned home from hospital in Saudi Arabia two months ago. The president has not made a public appearance since receiving treatment for a heart ailment last November.

Yar'Adua's inner circle, led by his wife, Turai, has allowed select groups of guests to meet the ill leader.

But Jonathan and the heads of parliament have yet to have their own meeting with the president, reviving concerns of a possible power struggle.

"I have not seen him. The Senate president has not seen him," Jonathan said, adding that this was adding to anxieties over Nigeria's future.

"Obviously, it does, but we cannot influence his family's thinking," he said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The old concept of "Third World" no longer applies and rich countries cannot impose their will on developing nations that are now major sources of global growth, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said on Wednesday.

In a speech setting the stage for World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington next week, where emerging economies will play a bigger role, Zoellick cautioned against falling back into patterns of self-interest.

He said economic progress in developing countries had profound implications for global cooperation, multilateralism and the work of institutions such as the World Bank.

"Economic and political tectonic plates are shifting," Zoellick told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center. "We can shift with them, or we can continue to see a new world through the prism of the old.

The meetings next week are expected to approve the first capital increase for the World Bank in 20 years. While rich industrial countries have been the biggest contributors to the World Bank and long dictated how the money is spent, emerging market countries will have a bigger role.

"Shareholders face a decision to strengthen the bank group, or allow it to wane in influence ... leaving it poorly resourced to cope with whatever comes next," he noted.

AIDING THE POOR

The Bank's resources have been stretched by record borrowing from developing countries during the financial crisis, as global demand dropped and credit markets dried up.

Since the crisis hit in mid-2008, the World Bank has committed more than $100 billion in loans and grants to developing countries. When it comes to total disbursements, the World Bank overtook the IMF's crisis payments.

Records show total disbursements between July 2008 and March 2010 was $67.7 billion for the World Bank and $56.9 billion for the IMF.

As the crisis spread across the globe, rich and emerging economies synchronized their responses to find a way out.

But with signs of global economic recovery now underway, Zoellick said he worried that the incentive to cooperate will fade as the recovery gives way to a fast-evolving multipolar

world economy.

"Already we feel gravitational forces pulling a world of nation-states back to the pursuit of narrower interests," he said.

The shifts in the world are not only in China and India, he said. Sub-Saharan Africa is set to grow by an average of over 6 percent to 2015 while South Asia, where half the world's poor live, could grow by as much as 7 percent over the same period.

With such growth, there are also opportunities for investors in Africa he said noting: "After Lehman Brothers and Greece, investors know developed markets can be risky too".

RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDERS

He said sharing responsibilities in a new international system will not be easy as world trade talks under the Doha Round and climate negotiations in Copenhagen revealed.

When it comes to tackling climate challenges, Zoellick cautioned that developed countries cannot impose "a one-size fits all" model on developing countries. "They will say 'No,'" he said.

"We need to move away from the binary choice of either power or environment," he said. "Climate change policy can be linked to development and win support from developing countries for low carbon growth -- but not if it is imposed as a straitjacket," Zoellick added.

While he did not mention it, the World Bank last week approved a controversial loan for a coal-fired plant in power-strapped South Africa despite abstentions from the United States, Britain and the Netherlands over concerns about its environmental impact.

Zoellick said the developed world has prospered through hydro-electricity from dams, noting that some of the same countries think the developing world should not have the same access to power sources used by developed economies.

"For them, thinking this is as easy as flicking a switch and letting the lights burn in an empty room," he added. "The old developed country prism is the surest way to lose developing country support for global environment goals."

Zoellick said the World Bank too must be open to change.

SANAA, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's Defense Ministry confirmed Thursday that cleric Anwar al-Awlaki is wanted on charges of ties with al-Qaida and association with a number of people involved in terrorist acts.

The ministry announced in a statement posted on its online website 26sep.net that Awlaki is also involved in acts that incited people to terrorist-related violence and hatred.

"Yemeni security agencies are currently tracking Awlaki," the ministry cited a security official as saying.

In response to including Awlaki into the hit list of "capture or kill" by the United States, the ministry quoted the security official as saying that "in case that Yemen receives from the U.S. any forensics or evidence that convicts Awlaki, the state (Yemen) would then act in accordance with the Yemeni constitution and law. "

"Yemeni security authorities continue to exert maximum efforts in tracking terrorist elements, as well as continuing cooperation with the international community in the fight against terrorism," said the official.

He pointed out that Anwar al-Awlaki was one of the elements targeted by security air raid of Yemen on Dec. 24, 2009, against a hideout of al-Qaida in the south-east province of Shabwa.

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama's administration added al-Awlaki to the U.S. hit list of "capture or kill."

Awlaki, 38, became famous last year after it emerged that he had communicated extensively by email with Major Nidal Hasan, the army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas.

The cleric, who allegedly had ties with the 9/11 hijackers, later praised the Fort Hood killings and said Muslims should only serve in the U.S. military if they intended to carry out similar attacks.

He has also been linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound jet last Christmas with explosives in his underwear.

Awlaki was born in New Mexico and spent years as an imam in the United States before moving to Yemen, where he is believed to remain in hiding.

ANTANANARIVO, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The president of the Highest Transitional Authority in Madagascar (HAT), Andry Rajoelina, vows to form an interim body and an electoral commission in a new bid to end the Indian Ocean island country's year-long crisis.

On state television, Rajoelina said late Wednesday he would disband his government and form an interim governing body if talks with former president Marc Ravalomanana in South Africa turned out successful.

Rajoelina made the remarks after a roadmap to end the crisis was proposed recently by France, South Africa and the Southern African Development Community.

He said the new proposal envisions elections in the shortest possible time. "Now the main preoccupation is the forming of a government of national unity," he declared.

The rival camps including supporters of Ravalomanana reached Maputo and Addis Ababa agreements last year months after Rajoelina replaced Ravalomanana with the backing of the military. But they failed to carry them out afterwards with Ravalomanana challenging Rajoelina's role to head the transition leading to an election.
After the proposal of the new roadmap by the French secretary of state in charge of cooperation, Alain Joyandet, Rajoelina sent a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy to confirm acceptance. Ravalomanana also accepted the idea in his letter.

"If it is necessary to sign an agreement to confirm the entry of Ravalomanana's group into this government of national unity, we shall proceed with the signing," Rajoelina declared.

As for the two other groupings respectively led by former presidents Didier Ratsiraka and Zafy Albert, the HAT leader promised that they would not be isolated from the government of national unity.

"We need to close the transitional period and move towards the organization of elections. We must learn some lessons from the one- year crisis. I believe that the Madagascan people have the wisdom necessary to move on into the Fourth Republic," he said.

But Rajoelina made it clear that it is not yet time for Ravalomanana to come back to Madagascar. "The timing is not right for him," he said. Ravalomanana went in exile abroad after ousted in March 2009. He is currently in South Africa.

Rajoelina also stressed the need set up a National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) in anticipation of the upcoming presidential elections.

He recalled a national convention held on March 4-5, which recommended the forming of CENI, the drafting of new electoral code and the formation of a government of national unity.

He said CENI would be the very first one in 50 years of the country's independence, adding CENI would guarantee transparency of the elections.

The HAT leader talked about the new approach after last week's dismissal of the minister in charge of the armed forces, general Noel Rakotonandrasa.
Rajoelina said the decision will not weaken the government. "I can assure you that the army is still united despite various attempts to divide them," he said, accusing some political forces of trying to bribe certain military officers.

"I do not think that we should use the army to take power," he said.

Rakotonandrasa was the main actor in the process of power transfer to Rajoelina a year ago, which is considered unconstitutional and even a coup.

Last month, the African Union imposed sanctions on Rajoelina and 108 other officials for failing to form a new government with the other three camps.

The military seems to lose patient with the crisis lingering on and has developed instability since the beginning of the year.

On Monday, the chief of general staff, Bruno Razafindrakoto, called on the HAT to give clear guidelines on how to end the crisis.

He made the call after a meeting in the capital Antananarivo between Rajoelina and senior officers of the army.

During his meeting with army officers, Rajoelina urged continued support from the military for a consensual solution to the crisis.

KHARTOUM, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese newspapers in Khartoum on Thursday reported that nine members of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) were killed in south Sudan, but Sudan People' s Liberation Army (SPLA) refuted the report.

"Nine NCP leading members were killed on Tuesday at Tumsah administrative unit in Raja locality of Western Bahral-Ghazal State in south Sudan after altercations with a member of the SPLA, the military arm of Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM)," reported Al Ray Al A'm daily on Thursday.

The paper quoted Chairman of Philip Tola, NCP Bahral-Ghazal sector, as saying that "the killing was committed by a member of the SPLA in the wake of altercations on the polling process."

However, an anonymous military source at the SPLA refuted the incident.

"Such incident has never taken place. It is a fabricated and baseless story," the anonymous source told Xinhua.

"The fabricated killing story comes as part of political harassments and it is an extension of a series of accusations by the ruling party to distort the SPLA and SPLM," he added.

No incidents of violence have been reported during the polling process of Sudan's general elections, which entered its final day Thursday.

However, scattered incidents of violence took place in south Sudan, which is already facing security difficulties due to the tribal conflicts which have claimed the lives of thousands of civilians since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ( CPA) in January 2005.

KHARTOUM, April 15 (Xinhua) -- A rebel group in Sudan's western region of Darfur has declared responsibility for kidnapping four peacekeepers of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), Khartoum's al-Sahafa daily reported Thursday.

Ibrahim al-Dugi, spokesperson of the People's Struggle Movement, said the abducted peacekeepers were two male and two female and they were in good health, according to the report.

He set a ransom of one billion Sudanese pounds (about 447.7 million U.S. dollars) and also demanded release of the movement's detainees held by South Darfur State's government as conditions to release the kidnapped peacekeepers, the report added.

However, UNAMID spokesperson Noureddine Mezni affirmed that the mission has not been contacted by the kidnappers.

In the meantime, a high level security delegation from UNAMID headquarters in El Fasher arrived in Nyala, capital of South Darfur State, to follow up the issue, while the mission authorities in Nyala said they have previously dealt with similar incidents, the report said.

On Tuesday, UNAMID said in a statement that four of its peacekeepers were missing since Monday evening in Nyala.

Later on the same day, an anonymous UNAMID source told Xinhua that four South African peacekeepers were stopped by some 10 gunmen when they were driving from their working site to their private accommodation near Nyala on Sunday.

ANTANANARIVO, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The president of the Highest Transitional Authority (HAT) in Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina, said on Wednesday evening his next meeting with the deposed president, Marc Ravalomanana, in South Africa will be the ultimate stage to end the crisis in the Indian Ocean island state.

A roadmap to end the crisis was proposed by France, South Africa and the Southern African Development Community. Rajoelina told state television that the roadmap was proposed after the realization of failure of international mediation.

"They do not want to admit it in public but even the African Union knows that it took sanctions against us just to defend its credibility. However, the international community is conscious of the fact that it is responsible for the failure of the political accords that we have signed," he said.

According to Rajoelina, the new proposal envisions elections in the shortest possible time.

"There's neither Maputo nor Addis Ababa agreement, now the main preoccupation is the forming of a government of national unity," Rajoelina said.

The rival camps including supporters of Ravalomanana reached Maputo and Addis Ababa agreements last year months after Rajoelina replaced Ravalomanana with the backing of the military. But the parties concerned failed to carry them out afterwards with Ravalomanana challenging Rajoelina's role to head the transition leading to an election.

After the proposal of the new roadmap by the French secretary of state in charge of cooperation, Alain Joyandet, Rajoelina sent a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy to express his acceptance. Ravalomanana accepted the idea in his letter.

"If it is necessary to sign an agreement to confirm the entry of Ravalomanana's group into this government of national unity, we shall proceed with the signing," Rajoelina declared.

As for the two other groupings respectively led by former presidents Didier Ratsiraka and Zafy Albert, the HAT leader promised that they would not be isolated from the government of national unity.

"We need to close the transitional period and move towards the organization of elections. We must learn some lessons from the one- year crisis. I believe that the Madagascan people have the wisdom necessary to move on into the Fourth Republic," he said.

But Rajoelina made it clear that it is not yet time for Ravalomanana to come back to Madagascar. "The timing is not right for him," he said. Ravalomanana went in exile abroad after ousted in March 2009. He is currently in South Africa.

Asked about his candidacy for future elections, he said he will not refuse to run if it is necessary.

"As for me, having power is not a priority," he said, adding the most critical thing for now is to get the country out of the crisis.

THE HAGUE, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The 10 Somali pirates arrested by the Dutch Navy are on their way to the Netherlands, pending their deportation to Germany to face prosecution, the Dutch Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

In a statement, the ministry said the pirates will be transferred by a Dutch aircraft to Eindhoven Airport in southern Holland. Later, the court and prosecution offices in Amsterdam will extradite them to Germany.

The 10 pirates hijacked a German merchant ship last week, but a crew of the Dutch marines boarded the ship and arrested them.

According to the Dutch defense ministry, the Dutch Navy arrested 42 pirates off the coast of Somalia last month, but they were all set free after being disarmed as no country was willing to take legal action against them.

KHARTOUM, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's National Elections Commission (NEC) said on Wednesday it was considering the possibility of postponing the ongoing general elections at some constituencies due to errors in polling cards and symbols of candidates.

"We will study the situation in these constituencies, and if the problem is not tackled, we will abide by the law, which authorizes us to postpone the elections at those constituencies," Abdalla Ahmed Abdalla, NEC deputy chairman told reporters in Khartoum.

The NEC acknowledged technical and administrative mistakes in the first polling day of Sudan's first multi-party elections in 24 years, and also decided to extend the polling period of the elections for two extra days.

The NEC said they had corrected the mistakes, which involved voters' lists and names of some candidates, and the polling process had proceeded normally after correcting those errors.

Meanwhile, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center is monitoring the Sudanese elections, met on Wednesday with NEC officials in Khartoum and reviewed the electoral process.

"We have a number of questions to ask the national elections commission members and they have responded to our questions adequately," Carter told reporters following the meeting.

He said they asked the NEC officials about the technical errors and why some voters have had difficulties in finding their names on the voters' lists.

"We also asked what will happen if there are some miss-printed ballots or if people voted erroneously," he added.

The Carter Center, which is the only U.S. nongovernmental organization authorized by the Sudanese government to monitor the general elections, has 65 observers to monitor Sudan's elections, besides other foreign observers from the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union and around 20,000 national observers.

DAR ES SALAAM, April 14 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen miners were killed and 20 others injured in a mine accident on Tuesday in Mwanza region in northern Tanzania, the local newspaper Daily News reported on Wednesday.

The incident that occurred on Tuesday afternoon at Sobora village involved 60 miners who were buried from the caving in one of the big shafts of the mine, the report said.

Sixteen people had lost their lives in the accident but only four bodies had so far been retrieved, according to information from the Mwanza Regional Police Commander Simon Siro, who added that efforts to retrieve other bodies were going on.

However, Masanja Jamatoni from the scene of accident said that by Tuesday evening all 16 bodies pulled out of the mine had been collected by relatives for burial while digging was still on to retrieve other bodies, the report added.

Jamatoni noted that there were 60 of miners in the mine for digging after it was established there was gold in it. He was one of the lucky ones who survived when all of a sudden a heap of sand buried them.

KHARTOUM, April 14 (Xinhua) -- The security situation in the Sudanese capital city of Khartoum remained calm on Wednesday as the polling process in the country's general elections entered its fourth day.

"The security situation is completely calm with no violation or irregularities affecting the process reported so far," Gen. Ahmed Al-Tuhami, Sudanese police official in charge of securing the elections told reporters Wednesday.

"No suits on violence incidents or irregularities regarding the elections have been filed," he added.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese national elections observation group announced that the technical and logistical problems which accompanied the first days of the polling process at a number of polling stations in some states did not affect transparency and freedom of the electoral process.

"The polling has progressed well after tackling the errors which delayed the process," Tariq Mubarak al-Majzoub, spokesman of the observation group, told reporters.

He expected that the decrease in technical errors during the third day of the polling will result in a rise in the voting turnout among youths and women.

Sudan's National Elections Commission (NEC) announced Tuesday that the final results of the polling will be announced on Tuesday, April 20.

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria April 14 (Xinhua) -- The police in oil rich Nigeria Rivers State on Wednesday confirmed the release of four foreign nationals abducted by gunmen operating in the region.

State police spokesperson Rita Abbey confirmed this to Xinhua on phone.

"Yes, the kidnapped expatriates were released on April 12," she said.

On if any ransom was paid, Abbey said the police was not aware of that.

The expatriates, three Syrian and one Lebanese were taken hostage on April 9. One police officer was killed in the process.

The Niger Delta is an unstable area where inter-ethnic clashes are commonplace. Access to oil revenue is the trigger for the violence.

Over 300 foreigners have been seized in the Niger Delta since 2006. Almost all have been released unharmed after paying a ransom.

2010-04-14
HARGEISA (Reuters) - A court in Somalia's northern breakaway region of Somaliland sentenced three people to death on Wednesday and ordered the deportation of four foreigners for four bomb attacks on the security forces, court sources said.

Five people were killed in the attacks between November and January, including four police officers killed in a single attack in January.

Somaliland is proud of its relative stability, compared with the anarchy further south, but the attacks were a reminder of its vulnerability to radical militants.

The four foreigners -- two Ethiopians, an Eritrean and a Sudanese -- said they were not involved in the attacks, but the chairman of Berbera Regional Court ordered their deportation.

Police sources said at the time of the blast in January that an explosive device had been left among milk cans near a mosque in Las Anod near the Puntland border.

Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab -- a major rebel group in Somalia -- hit Somaliland and Puntland with synchronised suicide blasts that killed at least 24 people in October 2008.

A row has been simmering between the Somaliland president and opposition parties over delays in elections, and analysts said this could trigger a re-arming of clan militias and new violence for al Shabaab to exploit.

But in a surprise announcement on Tuesday, Somaliland's National Electoral Commission said the presidential poll would take place in June.

2010-04-14
DJIBOUTI (Reuters) - Lawmakers in Djibouti on Wednesday approved an amendment to the constitution that paves the way for the president of the Horn of Africa nation to run for a third term.

Djibouti's parliament voted unanimously on the constitutional reforms which remove term limits, cut the presidential mandate to five years from six, create a senate and abolish capital punishment.

President Ismail Omar Guelleh's second term expires in 2011 and speculation has surrounded his plans for a third mandate.

Djibouti, a former French colony which separates Eritrea from Somalia, hosts France's largest military base in Africa and a major U.S. base. Its port is used by foreign navies patrolling busy shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia to fight piracy.

Dubai World has a deep-sea base at Djibouti port, which serves as the principle access point for goods entering and exiting land-locked Ethiopia.

Last month, Guelleh told Reuters China would be Djibouti's biggest investor next year and in 2012 and that he planned to make Djibouti port the biggest hub in the region at a cost of nearly half a billon U.S. dollars.

2010-04-14
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who had gallbladder surgery in Germany last month, will hold a cabinet meeting on Thursday, his first since he returned to Egypt, the cabinet spokesman said.

"President Mubarak will host the cabinet meeting tomorrow morning in Sharm El Sheikh, God willing," Magdy Rady told Reuters. Mubarak has been recovering in the Red Sea resort since returning to Egypt on March 27.

Mubarak, 81, handed over presidential powers to Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif just before his operation and reassumed them upon his return to Egypt.

He has not made a public appearance since his longest absence in almost three decades in power.

Egypt's stock market fell sharply in the days after the president's operation on March 6, before steadying when images of him sitting and chatting with doctors were broadcast on state television.

The president's absence has also fuelled uncertainty about who will lead Egypt after Mubarak, who has never named a successor and has not said whether he plans to run for a sixth six-year term in a presidential election due in 2011.

Mubarak's 46-year-old son Gamal has been widely seen as being groomed to succeed him, a plan that both father and son deny.

U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei, 67, has also surfaced as a possible presidential candidate, although the conditions he has set for running, which include changes to the constitution, are unlikely to be met.

2010-04-14
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's ruling party on Wednesday said it would invite opposition groups to join the government if it won elections, in an apparent bid to heal rifts over fraud accusations and faltering peace deals.

Sudan is four days into presidential and legislative polls that were supposed to bring the oil-producing state back to democracy more than two decades after a military-led coup.

The poll's credibility was cast in doubt after some major parties decided to boycott large parts of the poll, accusing incumbent president Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his northern National Congress Party (NCP) of widespread rigging.

"If we are declared winners in the elections ... we would extend the invitation to all parties, even those who have not participated in the elections, to join the government because we believe this is a critical moment in our history," senior NCP official Ghazi Salaheddin told reporters.

"We are facing important decisions like self-determination in the south and would like to garner as much support and as much consensus as we can."

The elections were set up under a 2005 peace accord that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war and also promised southerners a referendum in January 2011 on whether they should declare independence.

The overwhelming majority of southerners are thought to favour separation. But many have warned there is a risk of conflict in the build-up to the vote.

Bashir's NCP and other northern parties have vowed to campaign against separation, with some analysts saying the north is reluctant to lose control of oil fields in the south.

CAUTIOUS RESPONSE

Salaheddin said one of the first jobs of a new "inclusive" government would be to take a fresh look at policy on the conflict in the western Darfur region -- negotiations between Khartoum and a major Darfur rebel group are currently stalled.

He said another priority of the new government would be to resolve a dispute over the position of the county's north-south border -- a remaining sticking point in the 2005 accord.

Salaheddin said the offer to join the government went to all parties, mentioning in particular the opposition Umma, which is boycotting most voting, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which threatened a boycott then re-joined the race.

Parties who did not join the government risked isolation, he said. "Any politician in his right mind would not decline such an offer," he said in a recording of the briefing to journalists heard by Reuters.

Umma gave the offer a cautious welcome, saying it was interested in holding talks with the NCP and other parties, although it was too early to commit to joining a coalition.

"Let us talk about dialogue first, how to solve Sudan's problems," said Umma vice-president Fadlalla Burma Nasir.

Salaheddin's statement was dismissed by Yasir Arman, the former presidential candidate for south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), who pulled out of the race last month along withe most of the party's northern candidates.

Arman accused the NCP of jumping the gun by offering deals before the results were known.

"This is proof that they know the results in advance ... We don't need an invitation from Ghazi."

The SPLM, predicted to win most positions in south Sudan, was always likely to join a coalition after the election. Under Sudan's constitution, the president of south Sudan automatically becomes first vice president of the whole country.

Salaheddin's offer came amid further signs of confusion in the elections which observers say have already been by hit missing ballot boxes and gaps in voters lists.

The country's National Elections Commission said it was considering re-running ballots in a few constituencies to correct errors in voting forms.

2010-04-14
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe will press on with its drive to transfer control of foreign firms to local blacks, a minister said on Wednesday, contradicting an announcement by a senior official that the process had been suspended.

Youth, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere -- of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party -- issued regulations last month ordering foreign firms to give details of shareholding structures and their plans to achieve majority local control.

But on Tuesday, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's spokesman James Maridadi said the cabinet had agreed to suspend and review the rules.

The regulations took effect on March 1 and gave foreign-owned firms, including banks and mines, 45 days to file proposals on how they planned to sell 51 percent of their shares to black Zimbabweans within five years.

The deadline for submitting proposals is Thursday, April 15.

Kasukuwere told Reuters in a telephone interview that the process had not been frozen -- underlining the power struggle under way between Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change in the one-year-old unity government.

"That statement is at variance with the position taken by Cabinet. Someone is trying to play politics here," Kasukuwere said.

"The regulations have not been suspended. It's business as usual and businesses are encouraged to continue furnishing us with their empowerment proposals."

GOVERNMENT DIVIDED

Kasukuwere said the government would continue consulting businesses over the law, which would be applied differently to different sectors of the economy.

"The correct position is that we continue to interact with business, but we also continue to receive proposals," he said.

"We are not insisting on these companies becoming indigenous today. We are getting them to state how they propose to achieve compliance, then we will deal with their proposals, sector by sector."

The proposal for black Zimbabweans to take over foreign firms has divided the coalition government, with Mugabe and Tsvangirai publicly differing on the issue.

Mugabe's ZANU-PF government passed an indigenisation and economic empowerment law in 2007, well before he formed a power-sharing administration with Tsvangirai last year.

Analysts say the law would discourage investment and hurt efforts to rebuild an economy that shrank by more than 40 percent during a crisis-ridden decade before rebounding in 2009.

The government says Zimbabwe needs at least $10 billion to rebuild the economy, but foreign donors and investors are holding back aid and investments, waiting for reforms and signs that Mugabe is ready genuinely to share power.

Key foreign players in Zimbabwe's mining industry include Anglo Platinum and Impala Platinum Holdings, and Rio Tinto has gold and diamond mines in the country.

Britain's Standard Chartered Plc, Barclays Bank Plc and a unit of South Africa's Standard Bank are foreign-owned banks with operations in Zimbabwe.

Critics blame Mugabe, Zimbabwe's ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, for the country's economic woes, which worsened after his drive to seize white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks in 2000.

The veteran ruler denies the charge and blames Western sanctions for the economic crisis.

2010-04-14
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Islamist rebels warned private radio stations to stop playing music in the Somalian capital of Mogadishu, while at least 11 people were killed in fighting, residents in the south of country said on Wednesday.

A fragile western backed government controls just a few blocks in the capital, while militant Islamist groups, some linked to al Qaeda, control large swathes of southern and central Somalia.

The rebels want to impose a harsh version of sharia law on the anarchic nation on the Horn of Africa, and the threat to radio stations in Mogadishu demonstrated their growing reach.

Hizbul Islam -- which is allied with al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab rebels -- had given a 10-day ultimatum to Mogadishu's radio stations, a media rights group said.

"We could do nothing else but obey the order," said Mohamed Barre Fiyore, director of Danan, a radio station in the capital.

He said his station was using the sound of crowing of roosters, traffic and recitation of traditional poems instead of music to link programmes.

Similar actions had been taken elsewhere outside the capital, and the Islamists routinely ban what they call social vices like music or women not wearing veils.

"No music and no jingles made all our favourite programmes monotonous. I don't listen to the radio anymore. There is no interest. Pop music was my favorite and I am left without music now," said Asha Salad, an 18 year old in the capital.

Last week, al Shabaab said they had taken the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) off the air in regions they controlled because it spread Christian propaganda. It also took action against the U.S.-funded Voice of America.

WAR

Somalia has been enmeshed in civil war since the 1991 ousting of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. Since then, tens of thousands have died from famine, war and disease. The anarchy has also seen the rise of rampant piracy off Somalia's shores.

In the latest violence in the south -- some 250 km north of Mogadishu -- fighters from a moderate Sufi Islamist group, called Ahlu Sunna Waljamaca, aligned to the government, engaged in heavy clashes with al Shabaab rebels, residents said.

"So far, we have seen 11 dead bodies scattered along frontlines and 14 others wounded. The casualties might be more," Mohamud Abdi, an elder in Ali Gurey village, told Reuters.

President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's government has promised Ahlu Sunna five ministerial positions, and the post of deputy chief of staff in the army.

The Sufis' quarrel with the rebels is mainly ideological.

Somalia has a rich Sufi tradition going back more than five centuries. Sufis have been angered by the desecration of graves, the beheading of clerics, and bans on celebrating the birth of the Prophet imposed by the hardline Wahhabi insurgents.