Former Sudanese foes reach accord on Abyei flashpoint….

KHARTOUM (AFP)

09/06/08

Sudan and southern former rebels have signed a deal to end a dispute over the flashpoint oil-rich region of Abyei, allowing for the return of tens of thousands who fled fighting there last month.

President Omar al-Beshir signed the agreement with former rebel leader and First Vice President Salva Kiir in Khartoum late on Sunday, the official SUNA news agency reported.

Besides allowing for the return of those displaced by fighting in the central region last month, the agreement includes setting up an interim administration and seeking international arbitration to resolve the dispute.

So-called Joint Integrated Units made up of troops from north and south are to deploy in the area within 10 days, the Sudan Tribune newspaper reported.

Fighting in Abyei had threatened a return to Sudan’s two-decade civil war — the longest in Africa — which only ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005.

Under the 2005 deal, the south was offered a six-year transition period of regional autonomy and participation in a unity government until a 2011 referendum on self-determination.

Half-way through the transition period, Abyei is still not governed by a functioning joint administration as stipulated in a special protocol.

The impasse has been one issue delaying implementation of the entire peace deal. In 2011, Abyei will hold a separate referendum on whether to retain its special administrative status in the north or join the south.

Beshir “directed the national unity government to increase its efforts to end the suffering of the citizens at Abyei area,” SUNA reported, adding that a reconciliation conference would be held for the citizens of Abyei.

He said the roadmap was evidence of the Sudanese people’s capability to solve their own differences, however complicated.

Kiir said that the roadmap “would allow benefiting from oil revenues… as well as boosting coexistence,” SUNA reported.

North and south had rejected the findings of an Abyei border commission set up under the CPA, and will turn to “a specialised professional arbitration body.”

A police officer in Abyei who asked not to be named told AFP by telephone on Monday that the situation there was calm.

Malony Tong, a Sudan People’s Liberation Movement official responsible for Abyei who is currently in Khartoum, told AFP that he expected civilians to return to the town as soon as Sudanese army troops leave.

“There’s no one in Abyei now except for soldiers,” Tong said. “If the Sudanese armed forces in Abyei move out, then the civilians will come back. We’re expecting them to move out before the end of June.

Tong said the situation for the around 90,000 displaced was “very deplorable” but had improved slightly thanks to NGO assistance.

The Abyei fighting led the number two in Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement to say that Sudan was on the brink of civil war and compare the northern coalition partner to Nazis.

“As the situation is now, the two parties are on the verge of a civil war. The only way to avoid a civil war is to demilitarise the area and implementation of the Abyei protocol,” Pagan Amum said two weeks ago.

He described the fighting as the worst crisis endangering the entire three-year peace process that ended the civil war between north and south Sudan in which more than 1.5 million people were killed.

UN officials warn that up to 90,000 people may have been displaced by two rounds of fighting in May between government soldiers and the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army that flattened Abyei’s once bustling main town.

The ethnic clash in Abyei is between the Ngok Dinka generally affiliated to the south who dominated the town and outlying villages, and nomadic Arab tribesmen who migrate seasonally to graze their animals.

Bekele’s world record attempt falls short

Paul Gains CBC Sports

09/06/08 

Kenenisa Bekele’s attack on his world 10,000-metre record fell short at the Prefontaine Track Classic in Eugene, Ore., Sunday.

The defending Olympic champion finished in a time of 26 minutes, 25.97 seconds — eight seconds off the record of 26:17.53, which he set in Brussels in 2005.

It is still a time that only he and two-time Olympic champion Haile Gebrselassie have ever beaten and is likely to reinforce his dominance as the Beijing Games approach.

His Ethiopian teammates Ibrahim Jeilan and Maregu Zewdie filled the next two places with Mark Kosgei Kiptoo of Kenya finishing fourth.

The race was held at 9:30 a.m. local time in order to have the best running conditions possible. It was 13 degrees and calm at the start. Meet director Tom Jordan had compiled environmental conditions over the past 20 years which showed a 9:30 start was optimal.

A procession of pacemakers lined up to assist Bekele, but he was alone over the last three kilometres.

In Oslo’s Golden League meet on Friday night, Ethiopia’s Tirunesh Dibaba smashed the world 5,000-metre record set by another Ethiopian, Meseret Defar.

She won the race in 14:38.73, well ahead of Vivian Cheruiyot of Kenya whom she defeated to win the 2007 IAAF world championship title.

Kara Goucher, the American distance runner who shocked many by winning the bronze medal in the 10,000-metre race at Osaka, Japan, finished third in 14:58.10.

The Prefontaine Classic is held in memory of the late Steve Prefontaine, who ran at the University of Oregon and finished fourth in the 5,000-metre race at the 1972 Munich Games. He was killed in a car crash in 1975.

Despair as Somali peace talks end

  

BBC

09/06/08

United Nations-brokered talks to end 17 years of conflict in Somalia have been ended because the UN envoy said neither side would make concessions.

Ahmedou Ould Abdallah said busy international diplomats could not be held hostage by personality disputes.

He said the continuing fighting was terrible for the people of Somalia.

At least 28 people were killed during clashes between Islamist insurgents and Ethiopian troops backing the Somali government over the weekend.

On Sunday at least 12 people were killed in a third consecutive day of heavy fighting near the main Bakara market in the capital, Mogadishu.

BBC Somali service reporter Nasteh Dahir was also killed on Saturday by suspected Islamists in the southern port of Kismayo.

Optimistic

“I made the decision to terminate the conference,” Mr Abdallah told a news conference in Djibouti late on Sunday.

Mr Abdallah had persuaded teams from both the government and the opposition to go to neighbouring Djibouti in May in the latest attempt to negotiate an end to the anarchy in Somalia.
But they declined to meet directly.

The opposition insisted that a timetable be drawn up first for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from Somalia.

But Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdon was more optimistic, expressing hope that the peace initiative had not broken down irretrievably.

“We have high hopes that talks can succeed,” he said in Mogadishu.

But he said that Ethiopian troops could only leave once a UN peacekeeping mission came to Somalia.

Some 2,200 African Union troops are in Mogadishu but have done little to quell the violence which has triggered a humanitarian crisis that aid workers say may be the worst in Africa.

It is estimated that the conflict has created more than one million refugees.

Somalia has experienced almost constant civil conflict since the collapse of Mohamed Siad Barre’s regime in January 1991.

‘Targeted’

The International Federation of Journalists has condemned the killing of Nasteh Dahir on Saturday, and urged the international community to do more to restore stability in the war-torn nation.

The reporter, who worked for both the BBC and Associated Press news agency, was shot in the chest and stomach outside his home in Kismayo, about 500km south of Mogadishu.

The National Union of Somali Journalists said it was a “targeted assassination” and that the 26-year-old had received death threats.

At least nine other journalists have been killed in Somalia since February 2007, according to human-rights group Amnesty International.

Correspondents say Islamist insurgents are suspected in the attack on Mr Dahir.

Source: BBC

Egypt arrests 44 Africans

FPA – 09/06/08

EL-ARISH, Egypt – Egyptian border forces arrested 44 African migrants today as they tried to cross the dangerous desert border into Israel in the hope of finding work, a security official said.

Fifteen Eritreans, including four women, and an Ethiopian man were arrested by a dawn patrol along the porous border in the Sinai peninsula, the official said.

Twenty-eight others, from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan, were arrested later in the day at a different location along the 250-kilometre frontier, the official said.

In recent months Egypt has arrested scores of illegal immigrants, mostly Africans, trying to sneak into Israel from the Sinai in search of work. Several have been killed while trying to cross the frontier.

In February, human rights group Amnesty International slammed Egypt’s use of force at the border.