NAIROBI, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- The recent murderous attack on the Togo football team in Angola highlights the need for African governments to take actions to control the proliferation of guns, the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) said on Tuesday.

IANSA said in a statement issued in Nairobi that the shooting should act as a wake up call for the African governments to tackle the gun problem.

"Our sympathies go to the relatives of the dead and injured, and we praise the dignified way the players responded," said Joseph Dube, the Africa coordinator of IANSA.

"In Africa, football is a unifying force, and in this shooting we were all under attack. There can be no justification for such horrific violence, and the events in Cabinda are a reminder of the need for a concerted campaign to reduce gun violence."

Dube said the Angolan tragedy has led to concerns about the safety of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, and other international sporting events.

But, he noted that it also gives South Africa an example to show leadership, and take positive measures which will be an example to the rest of the continent.

"But stronger action is needed," Dube said. "Stadiums should be permanently declared Firearm Free Zones, and not just for the duration of the 2010 tournament. Carrying a weapon into a sports stadium should be made illegal."

"Guns and football do not go together."

IANSA welcomes the fact that guns will be banned from football stadiums during the World Cup.

KHARTOUM, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Tuesday presented a nomination application to the Sudanese National Elections Commission (NEC) to run for the presidential elections scheduled for April this year, the official SUNA news agency reported.

The Sudanese president handed over the nomination application with the presence of Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and a large group of al-Bashir's supporters, according to the report.

KINSHASA, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Six people were killed and two others still trapped after the collapse of an abandoned cassiterite mining quarry in Manono, Katanga province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), well placed sources reported on Monday.

The tragedy occurred on Sunday afternoon at a quarry popularly called "red water". Among the six bodies recovered were five children ages six to 15 and a woman, a mother of the three children who were killed in the accident.

Two other people were still trapped underground. The rescue efforts halted on Sunday night before resumed on Monday, according to two survivors who escaped unhurt.

The toll in the abandoned quarries of Congo-Etain has reignited the debate on the question of women and children working in mines, an issue condemned by many local associations. The critics are complaining about negative results in their sensitization campaigns against the practice.

"Until this day, neither these associations nor the mining police have managed to clear from the quarries the children and women who are always the victims of extreme poverty that pushes them to risk their lives," a member of one of the associations indicated.

This kind of collapse is frequent during the rainy season in the mineral rich central African country.

LOME, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Togo began a three-day mourning period on Monday in memory of the two killed in an attack on the bus of the Togolese football team by Cabinda separatists in Angola.

The flags are flying at half-mast in the diplomatic quarters, schools and administrative services in the entire country.

The separatists attack on Friday led to nine injuries out of which two succumbed to their injuries, deputy coach Amelete Abalo and media official Stan Ocloo.

The second goalkeeper, Obilale Kodjovi, was also among the injured. He was evacuated to Johannesburg in South Africa for medical treatment, and did not return to Togo on Sunday with the team which pulled out of the African Cup of Nations.

The mourning period will end on Jan. 13, which was celebrated as the "national liberation day" by the regime of Gnassingbe Eyadema between April 1967 and Feb. 5, 2005.

On Jan. 13, 1963, Togo's first elected president Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated in a coup d'etat perpetrated by a group of Togolese military officers who were demobilized by the French army including Eyadema.

On Jan. 13, 1967, four years later, the second president Nicolas Grunitzky was overthrown in a coup d'etat, in which the military claimed that the country was on the "verge of getting divided."

In his New Year message to the nation on Dec. 31, Togolese President Faure Gnassingbe announced the redefinition of the country's calendar, giving another reason for celebrating Jan. 13 "as a day for appeasement and reconciliation."

"Jan. 13, 2010 will be essentially a day of meditation and praying for peace, for reconciliation and for success in the presidential elections," Gnassingbe declared.

The cortege of the Togolese team was shot at by the Cabinda separatists when the team was entering this enclave to play a match against Ghana scheduled for Jan. 11.

It would be a match of the final phase of the African Cup of Nations being held in Angola. The Togolese team had been training for the tournament in Pointe Noire in the Republic of Congo.

Under a government directive, Togo withdrew from the competition bringing its national team back home on Sunday.

KHARTOUM, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese National Election Committee (NEC) on Monday announced that the process of submitting nomination applications for the candidacies of the president of the country is to start on Tuesday.

In a statement issued in Khartoum, NEC Chairman Musa Mahjoub said that the committee would also accept at the same time nomination applications of those who want to run for the posts of the president of southern Sudan, governors of the 25 states in the country and members of the legislative councils on the national and state levels in the general elections scheduled for April this year.

He further explained that a person would be eligible for nomination as candidate if he or she satisfies specific terms including that he or she should be a Sudanese citizen, of sound mind, at least 40 years of age, literate and not having been convicted of an offense involving honesty or moral turpitude.

He added that the applicants should present certificates proving their consent to run for the elections and their financial assets and properties together with properties of their family members.

He noted that the candidate should also pay 10,000 SDGs (some 4,350 U.S. dollars) as insurance running for the office of the president, 5,000 SDGs for the office of president of southern Sudan and 2,000 for the office of governors.

In the meantime, NEC Deputy Chairman Abdalla Ahmed Abdalla warned against violence accompanying the elections.

"Violence accompanying elections has become a repeated phenomenon in many countries and therefore precautionary measures must be taken to face it and secure the coming elections in Sudan," he said.

The upcoming general elections, in which all the top posts of the executive and legislative authorities will be put for run, are the first multi-party elections to be held in this African country in more than 20 years.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the Khartoum government and the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 2005 to end a 21-year-long civil war had stipulated the general elections to be organized in July last year.

But the elections have been postponed to April this year due to logistics problems as well as a dispute between the two peace partners, namely the ruling National Congress Party and the SPLM on the latest population census.

According to the CPA, a referendum would be held in southern Sudan in January next year, only nine months after the general elections, to decide whether the semi-autonomous region would break away from Sudan, the largest country in size in Africa. (1 U.S. dollar = 2.30 SDGs)

KHARTOUM, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced on Monday that he retired from the office of the commander in chief of the Sudanese armed forces.

The surprising step will facilitate him to run for the upcoming general elections scheduled for April this year, local observers believed.

"Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir exempt himself from the post of the commander-general of the Armed Forces today," a presidential decree issued in the name of al-Bashir read.

The decision came only several hours following 20 Sudanese parties agreed to select al-Bashir as their candidate for the post of president of the country to run in the general elections.

The Sudanese law prohibits any member of the regular military forces to join political parties and organizations or to exercise political activities.

The Sudanese National Election Committee (NEC) on Monday announced that the process of submitting nomination applications for the candidacies of the president of the country will start on Tuesday.

20100111
press tv

A group calling itself al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has threatened to execute a French hostage if four militants held in Mali are not released within 20 days.

"The Mujahideen have decided to inform the French and Malian governments of their only condition and demand for the release of the French hostage Pierre Kamat, which is the release of our four prisoners arrested by Mali several months ago," the statement read on a website used by the group on Sunday.

Kamat was kidnapped on November 25 in Mali.

"We call upon the French public and the family of the kidnapped to put pressure on the Sarkozy government and to prevent it from committing the stupidity, which was committed by [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown against the British citizen," the group said.

Last May, AQIM executed British hostage Edwin Dyer who was kidnapped at the Mali-Niger border.

press tv

A Rwandan government report on the assassination of then Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994 has implicated Hutu Power Movement leader Theoneste Bagosora as the mastermind.

The UN International Criminal Tribunal sentenced Bagosora to life in prison in 2008 for instigating Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 to one million ethnic Tutsis and Hutus were killed.

Bagosora served as a senior defense official in Habyarimana's administration.

The investigation, launched in 2007, interviewed 500 witnesses and reviewed thousands of documents. A ballistic expert team was brought in from the UK to conduct the inquiry.

"(The) assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana was the work of Hutu extremists who calculated that killing their own leader would torpedo a power-sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords," said the report.

"It is the opinion of the committee therefore that the… plane of President Habyarimana was shot down from Kanombe Military Barracks by elements of the Rwanda Armed Forces which controlled that zone," it said.

Habyarimana was returning from peace talks in Tanzania and planned to swear in a transitional government when his plane was shot down on April 6, 1994.

Cyprien Ntaryamira, the president of Burundi at the time, was also killed in the attack.

20100111

ABIDJAN (Reuters) - The ruling party of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo called for the electoral commission chief to resign on Monday, casting doubt on whether Ivory Coast will be able to hold long-delayed post-war polls on time.

It accused Robert Mambe, a member of the opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast (PDCI), of fraud in drawing up a voter list and called for his prosecution.

Mambe told Reuters he would not yet comment on the claims.

No authority has questioned him or charged him but as Ivory Coast approaches an election nearly five years overdue, the last thing most war-weary Ivorians want to see is a political spat causing further delays.

In a statement on Saturday, Gbagbo accused the electoral commission (CEI) of failing to deal thoroughly with all contested cases, saying it had admitted some 429,000 voters who may be illegitimate.

His party took that accusation a step further on Monday.

"Officials at the CEI had already reported the existence of a vast operation of fraud in the electoral list conducted by Robert Mambe," wrote Affi N'Guessan, president of Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front (FPI) party in the state-owned Fraternite Matin daily.

"These reports ... damage not only the credibility of the CEI but the honour of Ivory Coast."

20100111

CABINDA, Angola (Reuters) - Angola said on Monday it had arrested two people suspected of taking part in an attack on a bus carrying the Togo national soccer team to the African Nations Cup in which two delegation members were killed.

It said it wanted its neighbours and France to clamp down on the rebels who have claimed responsibility for the attack in Cabinda, a heavily militarised oil-producing province geographically cut off from northern Angola.

Provincial prosecutor Antonio Nito said the two suspects belonged to the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC) -- the small remnant of a group that has been fighting for independence from Angola for over 30 years.

Friday's attack took place shortly after the Togo team's bus crossed into Cabinda from the Republic of Congo.

The team were brought home by their government on Sunday together with the bodies of their assistant coach and media officer to begin three days of mourning, as Africa's biggest soccer event got under way.

Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast on Monday contested the first match in Cabinda city's new stadium and were due to be followed by Togo's match against Ghana. Togo's sports minister and several players had said they hoped the schedule could be changed to let them honour their dead colleagues by playing.

But the Confederation of African Football was adamant on Monday that if Togo did not turn up to play their first match in Cabinda, they would forfeit their place.

20100111

LUANDA (Reuters) - Angola intends to crush FLEC insurgents who claimed the killing of two members of the Togo national soccer delegation, and pursue rebels living abroad, a government minister said on Monday.

The Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), a small remnant of a group that has been fighting for independence from Angola for over 30 years, is led from Paris by its long-time president, N'Zita Tiago. Some rebels are believed to operate from the Congo Republic to the north of Cabinda.

"We will do all we can to finish them off," Antonio Bento Bembe, an ex-rebel who is now minister without portfolio in charge of Cabinda Affairs and the government's strategy on the FLEC, told Reuters in an interview.

"We want an international arrest warrant to be issued to capture those responsible for fuelling this attack."

Bento Bembe said the driver of the bus, who was initially believed to have died, was alive and out of danger.

He said Tiago should be arrested.

"N'Zita Tiago has connections to those who carried out this terrorist attack and should be arrested. We're talking about a group of gangsters that want to spread terror, fear and insecurity."

20100111

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) - The prolonged absence of Nigeria's president, who is in hospital overseas, has stalled a federal amnesty programme and forced former rebels to rethink their participation, community leaders said.

Ex-rebel commanders and local activists will decide on Tuesday after a three-day meeting in Bayelsa's capital Yenegoa whether to continue participating in the programme, which aims to rehabilitate former militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The former militant leaders at the meeting include Government Tompolo, Eris Paul, and Ebikabowei Victor Ben, who each at one time commanded hundreds of loyalists.

"Yar'Adua's absence has shut down virtually the entire country, not just the post-amnesty package for the ex-militants," said Chris Ekiyor, president of the ethnic rights group the Ijaw Youth Council.

"We have not been comfortable with contents of that (post-amnesty) package. So right now we are looking into the entire package in our ongoing meeting in Yenegoa," he added.

Thousands of militants last year handed over their weapons in return for Yar'Adua's promise for clemency, monthly stipends, education, job opportunities and investment in the Niger Delta.

OIL PRODUCTION

Violence has subsided in the Niger Delta as a result, allowing some oil companies to repair damaged facilities and boost production to around 2 million barrels per day.

20100111

NAIROBI (Reuters) - A Jamaican Muslim cleric has been flown back to Kenya despite being deported last week because Nigeria refused to give him a transit visa to Gambia, the Kenyan government said on Monday.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal was visiting the east African nation for a preaching tour, but Kenyan intelligence officials feared his speeches would have stoked radicalism in a country that has suffered two al Qaeda-linked attacks.

Faisal was deported from Britain in 2007 for preaching racial hatred and urging his audiences to kill Jews, Hindus and Westerners. He was arrested in Kenya on December 31.

Kenya's immigration minister, Otieno Kajwang, told a news conference that Faisal was now being held at a prison in Nairobi after he was returned to the capital on Sunday.

"Kenya will keep him in custody until we safely take him back to his country," Kajwang said. "Even though Kenya is having some difficulties to deport him ... In the interest of the country, Kenya will not release him until he is returned home."

Attacks in Kenya include a 1998 bomb at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, as well as a hotel bombing and a botched missile attack on an Israeli airliner leaving Kenya's Mombasa airport in 2002.

20100111

LAGOS (Reuters) - South Africa's FirstRand has expressed interest in buying one of the nine Nigerian banks rescued by the West African country's central bank last year, the company's new managing director told Reuters on Monday.

Nigeria's central bank asked for potential bidders to register their interest in the troubled banks by mid-December to test the appetite for acquisitions as the regulator looks to reshape Nigeria's banking landscape.

The regulator has not published the names of any interested parties.

"We did register interest in that process. I'm not able to mention (which bank), but we certainly registered our interest," FirstRand's Managing Director Sizwe Nxasana said on the sidelines of an economic conference.

FirstRand, South Africa's No.2 banking group, is the first foreign bank to confirm it is interested in buying one of the troubled banks. Nigeria's Fidelity Bank said in November it was also a potential bidder.

Nxasana, who took over the reins of FirstRand in December, said FirstRand is looking to invest "meaningful amounts of capital" and fund any deal from its internal reserves.

"We are looking at opportunities, especially given the reforms taking place driven by the Central Bank of Nigeria," he said.

Nigeria's central bank has injected about 600 billion naira into the banking system since mid-August, after its auditors found nine institutions had built up bad loans that left them too weakly capitalised to sustain their operations.

20100111

KIGALI (Reuters) - Hutu extremists shot down the plane carrying former President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose assassination marked the start of the 100-day genocide in 1994, a government report said on Monday.

The probe, set up by President Paul Kagame, said members of Habyarimana's inner circle planned his murder months before to scuttle a power-sharing deal with then-rebel Kagame and used it as a pretext for killing 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

"(The) assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana was the work of Hutu extremists who calculated that killing their own leader would torpedo a power-sharing agreement known as the Arusha Accords," it said.

Habyarimana was returning from peace talks in Tanzania accompanied by his Burundian counterpart and was due to swear in a transitional government and begin integration of Kagame's forces into the national army, the report said.

Mystery surrounding Habyarimana's murder has spawned a number of investigations in the past that have aroused international controversy.

In 2006 French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière accused Kagame's largely Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) of shooting down the plane.

Kigali immediately severed relations with Paris, and accused Francois Mitterrand's government of funding and training those responsible for the slaughter. France denies any involvement in the genocide. The two countries restored ties in November.

According to the inquiry, Rwanda Armed Forces (FAR) stationed near Kigali airport shot down Habyarimana's private Falcon 50 jet using a pair of surface-to-air missiles.

20100111

DUBAI (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's North African wing have threatened to execute a French hostage if four al Qaeda prisoners being held in Mali were not released within 20 days.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said Pierre Kamat would be killed if its demand was not met, the group said on a website used by al-Qaeda linked organisations.

"The Mujahideen have decided to inform the French and Malian governments of their only condition and demand for the release of the French hostage Pierre Kamat, which is the release of our four prisoners arrested by Mali several months ago," the statement posted on Sunday said.

By the end of the 20-day period, which started on Sunday, "both governments will be fully responsible for the French hostage's life", the group added.

Kamat was kidnapped in Mali on November 25 last year and the group claimed his kidnapping as well as the kidnapping of three Spaniards.

Last May, AQIM executed British hostage Edwin Dyer, who was kidnapped on the border between Mali and Niger in January 2009.

"We call upon the French public and the family of the kidnapped to put pressure on the Sarkozy government and to prevent it from committing the stupidity which was committed by (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown against the British citizen," the group said.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has claimed responsibility for a number of attacks in Algeria and several other countries in the region.

It has extended its territory in recent years to include Mauritania, at the western end of the Sahara desert. In December 2007 it killed four French tourists, prompting the cancellation of off-road automobile race the Dakar Rally in 2008.

20100111

TUNIS (Reuters) - Africa must push into Asian markets to support economic growth because the effects of financial crises in the United States and Europe may drag on for two years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.

In a speech at the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Tunis, Stiglitz said some African governments were still incapable of managing their natural resources in order to accumulate the reserves they need to resist the global economic downturn.

The AfDB has forecast Africa's economic growth will accelerate to as much as 6 percent this year from around 4 percent in 2009 due to a revival in investment flows and commodity exports that dried up in the global slump.

"Africa must change its economic geography and steer towards the Asian market because the repercussions of the crisis will still be present in 2011 and 2012 in the USA and Europe," said Stiglitz.

Africa's strongest economic links were traditionally with Europe but its trade with Asian states has grown fast as China seeks access to the continent's oil and mineral wealth and Africans are drawn to cheap Asian consumer goods.

Speaking at a conference on Africa's emergence from the global economic downturn, Stiglitz said African governments need to warn of impending crises before they happen.

Once crises begin, he said, they will not end without proper state intervention.

He said African countries rich in natural resources such as oil had less need of privatizations and should better manage their resources through investment, creating job opportunities and boosting health services.

"A lot of countries in Africa do not know how to manage their natural resources like oil, he said. "Natural resources should be used in the interests of Africa, as is the case in Chile."

20100111

ABUJA (Reuters) - Ailing Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua is "very much conscious" and his health is improving after receiving treatment for a heart condition in hospital in Saudi Arabia, a presidency spokesman said on Monday.

The 58-year-old leader has not been seen or heard from publicly since leaving Nigeria on November 23, leading to widespread speculation about his health.

"The president is alive and actually getting better," Olusegun Adeniyi told reporters by phone from Angola. "He is very much conscious, can talk and has been talking, including making phone calls to some people back home."

Adeniyi said Yar'Adua had ordered him to return to Nigeria's capital Abuja on Tuesday.

A mass rally, led by Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka, is scheduled for early Tuesday in Abuja to pressure the government to disclose more information on Yar'Adua's medical condition. Parliament is also expected to address the issue of Yar'Adua's absence on Tuesday.

Vice President Goodluck Jonathan has been representing the president at cabinet meetings and official functions but executive powers have not been transferred to him, leading to questions over the legality of decisions made by the government in the president's absence.

KHARTOUM, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese National Election Committee (NEC) on Monday announced that the process of submitting nomination applications for the candidacies of the president of the country is to start on Tuesday.

In a statement issued in Khartoum, NEC Chairman Musa Mahjoub said that the committee would also accept at the same time nomination applications of those who want to run for the posts of the president of southern Sudan, governors of the 25 states in the country and members of the legislative councils on the national and state levels in the general elections scheduled for April this year.

He further explained that a person would be eligible for nomination as candidate if he or she satisfies specific terms including that he or she should be a Sudanese citizen, of sound mind, at least 40 years of age, literate and not having been convicted of an offense involving honesty or moral turpitude.

He added that the applicants should present certificates proving their consent to run for the elections and their financial assets and properties together with properties of their family members.

He noted that the candidate should also pay 10,000 SDGs (some 4,350 U.S. dollars) as insurance running for the office of the president, 5,000 SDGs for the office of president of southern Sudan and 2,000 for the office of governors.

In the meantime, NEC Deputy Chairman Abdalla Ahmed Abdalla warned against violence accompanying the elections.

"Violence accompanying elections has become a repeated phenomenon in many countries and therefore precautionary measures must be taken to face it and secure the coming elections in Sudan," he said.

The upcoming general elections, in which all the top posts of the executive and legislative authorities will be put for run, are the first multi-party elections to be held in this African country in more than 20 years.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed by the Khartoum government and the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in 2005 to end a 21-year-long civil war had stipulated the general elections to be organized in July last year.

But the elections have been postponed to April this year due to logistics problems as well as a dispute between the two peace partners, namely the ruling National Congress Party and the SPLM on the latest population census.

According to the CPA, a referendum would be held in southern Sudan in January next year, only nine months after the general elections, to decide whether the semi-autonomous region would break away from Sudan, the largest country in size in Africa. (1 U.S. dollar = 2.30 SDGs)

KHARTOUM, Jan. 11 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir announced on Monday that he retired from the office of the commander in chief of the Sudanese armed forces.

The surprising step will facilitate him to run for the upcoming general elections scheduled for April this year, local observers believed.

"Field Marshal Omar al-Bashir exempt himself from the post of the commander-general of the Armed Forces today," a presidential decree issued in the name of al-Bashir read.

The decision came only several hours following 20 Sudanese parties agreed to select al-Bashir as their candidate for the post of president of the country to run in the general elections.

The Sudanese law prohibits any member of the regular military forces to join political parties and organizations or to exercise political activities.

The Sudanese National Election Committee (NEC) on Monday announced that the process of submitting nomination applications for the candidacies of the president of the country will start on Tuesday.