UN experts say Rwanda and Uganda backing DR Congo

UNITED NATIONS — A UN expert panel accused Rwanda's defense minister of being the "de facto" commander of a rebellion in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to a confidential report seen by AFP. The report accused both Rwanda and Uganda of arming and supporting the M23 rebels, whose members are former fighters in an ethnic Tutsi rebel movement theoretically integrated into the Congolese military under a 2009 peace deal. This is not the first time the two central African nations have been accused of backing rebels in a proxy war in eastern Congo, allegations they have consistently denied. In June, in an interim report, the same UN panel said it had "overwhelming evidence" that senior Rwandan Defense Forces officers "have been backstopping the rebels through providing weapons, military supplies, and new recruits." In the updated, more detailed report, the experts -- who are tasked with monitoring the implementation of UN sanctions in Congo -- said they have "found no substantive element of its previous finding which it wishes to alter." The report alleged that the M23 "de facto chain of command includes General Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the Rwandan minister of Defense, General James Kabarebe." The renegade general Ntaganda is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. The report said the government of Rwanda continues to violate the arms embargo through direct military support to M23 rebels, encouraging Congolese soldiers to desert, and providing arms, intelligence and political advice. And in Uganda, senior officials gave support "in the form of direct troop reinforcements in DRC territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations." The report said Ugandan and Rwandan military units jointly supported M23 in a series of attacks in July 2012 to take over the major towns of Rutshuru territory and a Congolese military base, Rumangabo. During the July clashes, a UN peacekeeper from India was killed. According to the experts, "the rebels expanded their control over Rutshuru territory with extensive foreign support in July 2012 and have recently taken advantage of an informal ceasefire to enhance alliances and command proxy operations elsewhere." They added that "the use and recruitment of child soldiers by armed groups, notably by M23, has increased," with "the enrollment and training of hundreds of young boys and girls" and "certain M23 commanders have ordered the extra-judicial executions of dozens of recruits and prisoners of war." Both Rwanda and Uganda have again denied strenuously that they support the M23 rebellion. Rwandan foreign minister Louise Mushikiwabo accused the authors of the report of mounting a "determined political campaign opposed to resolving true causes of conflict" in the Congo. Her Ugandan counterpart, Henry Okello Oryem, called the report "a joke" and called on the experts to produce their evidence. He told AFP Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni will continue mediation efforts in the region, saying leaders there would give no credit to UN report. The M23 rebel fighters were incorporated into the DR Congo army in 2009 as part of a peace deal in the troubled, mineral-rich eastern region. They quit the army this year in a dispute over salaries and poor conditions.

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ADRA Donates Relief Materials To Flood Victims In Makurdi the Benue State capital

nwfhAS part of its commitment to humanitarian cause, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church under its relief arm, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) has donated relief materials valued at N2.1 million to victims of flood disaster in Benue State. Associate Director, ADRA Ife, Osun State, Pastor Daniel Oriaku while presenting the items yesterday at the LGEA, Wurukum camp in Makurdi said, the gesture was aimed at reducing the sufferings of the victims. The items donated to the camp include: 43 bags of rice, 20 bags of beans, 20 bags of garri, 240 liters
of palm oil, 615 packets of Maggi, 15 cartons of toilet soap, 40 bags of salt and 40 packs of tissue papers.

www.tivyouthcongress.blogspot.com

NIGERIAN PIPELINE BLAST 15 FEARD DEAD IN ABIA STATE AS 25 SUFFERS VARIOUS BURNS

No fewer than 15 persons have been confirmed dead and more than 25 suffering various degrees of burns from fire said to have resulted from an alleged vandalism of pipelines at Umueke village in Abia state. Commissioner for Petroleum and Solid Minerals Development, Chief Don Ubani, who confirmed the incident, which he said occurred on September 23, expressed surprise that people could still break pipelines despite several warnings against such acts. Ubani said that hospitals treating the injured vandals have an obligation to report them to law enforcement agencies warning that traditional rulers in whose domains incidents of vandalism occured, "should be prepared to identify such hoodlums for appropriate actions by the government or face the consequences of nonchalance". LEADERSHIP learnt that the state governor, Chief Theodore Orji, had on receiving the information about the fire incident, sent his deputy, Sir Emeka Ananaba, to the area to assess the level of damage. He expressed regrets over the loss of lives, saying that pipeline vandalism was a very costly venture which people should desist from engaging in to save their lives.The deputy governor said that it was high time people stopped having that notion that they could live on criminal activities such as pipeline vandalism, and added that those with criminal tendencies should have a rethink and engage in legitimate means of livelihood. According to him, incidents of pipeline vandalism have become a source of worry to the state government with its attendant loss of human lives and revenue accruing to the federal government, and pointed out that the state government has been supporting the security agencies with logistics to fight the menace. Ananaba wondered why people should still engage in pipe line vandalism even with stories of dire consequences that people have faced while scooping fuel from broken pipeline in several places across the nation. He advised parents to restrain their children and wards to refrain from criminal activities.

Fresh clashes between the DR Congo's army and a group of mutineers erupted Sunday in the eastern...

Fresh clashes between the DR Congo's army and a group of mutineers erupted Sunday in the eastern province of Nord-Kivu, defectors said, a day after fierce battles near a gorilla park.
"We're on the ground. We've been confronting the FARDC (the Democratic Republic of Congo's military) since this morning three kilometres (two miles) from Bunagana ... where we were yesterday," Vianney Kazarana, a spokesman for the mutineers' March 23 Movement, told AFP by telephone.
"The FARDC are using combat tanks. We're resisting. We're at the front, we're facing the enemy."
Nord-Kivu governorate spokesman Celestin Sibomana told AFP that since 1200 GMT fighting has been going on between national troops and mutineers at the strategic hill location of Mbuzi, which faces the Rwanda border, as well as at Chanzu, close to the Uganda border.
But the "road leading from Rutshuru to Bunagana, at the border with Uganda, is open," he added.
"The FARDC is controlling and securing the zone. But the population have been displaced from Bunagana, which is now deserted," he said.
Mutineers have been pushed back "to the end of the Virunga National Park, close to the border with Rwanda," said the spokesman.
The two sides have been mired in tit-for-tat clashes in the remote jungle region for weeks.
The mutineers are former rebels who were integrated into the army under a 2009 peace deal but started to defect en masse, complaining of poor treatment.
On Saturday, fighting broke out when the mutineers attacked army positions in the Rutshuru area near Virunga National Park, home to more than half the world's 700 or so mountain gorillas.
The toll arising from the attacks were uncertain.
Sources close to the army spoke of two dead and several wounded among national troops, according to Omar Kavota, vice-president of a Nord-Kivu non-governmental organisation.
"They also mentioned several mutineers killed," said Kavota.
"We recorded 13 wounded FARDC who were admitted Sunday to the general hospital of Rutshuru.
"Among them, four who are seriously injured were flown this afternoon by a MONUSCO helicopter to intensive care in Goma," he added, referring to the UN peacekeeping mission.
Kinshasa accuses former rebel leader General Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for enlisting child soldiers, of leading the mutiny.

2015: ACN, CPC Consider Options to Dislodge PDP

With three years to go before the 2015 presidential election, opposition parties have started considering a number of options on how to join forces to wrest power from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.

The stumbling block to their goal, however, is the much-speculated presidential ambition of the leader of the Congress for Progressive Change, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), who is considered a threat to the plan of forging a working relationship between his party and the Action Congress of Nigeria.

But the renewed romance between the ACN and CPC seems not to have ruffled the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, with its national publicity secretary, Olisa Metu, waving it off as a distraction to the party’s commitment to transform Nigeria.

The last effort at an alliance of the two parties before the 2011 presidential election fell through due to irreconcilable differences between the leadership of the two parties.

Source told THISDAY at the weekend that some stalwarts of the two parties are considering the viability of the Buhari candidacy with the ACN national leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, as running mate in the next poll.

If he runs in 2015, Buhari would have contested the presidency for a record four times since 2003 when he first took part in the presidential race on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples Party.

In the run up to the 2011 election, he stated that the contest will be his last, but in recent months speculation has been mounting that he may once more throw his hat into the ring come 2015.

Though Buhari is yet to take a clear stand on whether he would contest the 2015 presidential election, saying that he will continue to play an active role in the polity, his comment last week in Niger State warning PDP not to rig the 2015 election otherwise there will be bloodshed, was a pointer that he might take another shot at the presidency.

The snag in the Buhari-Tinubu ticket, if it becomes a reality, it was gathered, is that the CPC leader, who will be 73 by 2015, might be considered too old for the race in a world where younger elements are emerging leaders in other nations.

Considering this a setback, younger elements in the ACN and the CPC are canvassing another team, comprising former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory and a close Buhari ally, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, and the governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola to fly the alliance ticket should things work out between the two parties.  Fashola, by 2015, would have served out his two terms as governor.

THISDAY gathered that following exploratory talks between both parties, a situation that saw Buhari visiting Tinubu on May 6 for further talks, members of both parties are concerned over whether Buhari would still present himself as a presidential candidate of the CPC.

One CPC member involved in the alliance talks between the CPC and ACN said the talks between the two parties were still ongoing, however, noting that Buhari’s political future was casting a cloud over negotiations.

The source said the young Turks in both parties, nonetheless, have been meeting to work out a Plan B.

“Our game plan is to present two younger elements for the presidential ticket. We are thinking that el-Rufai and Fashola will make a perfect combination. But we don’t know the game plan that Buhari and Tinubu have.

“el-Rufai is popular among the northern youths and Fashola’s commendable performance makes him the perfect match for the former minister. This is what we are thinking of at the moment, but there could be changes in the future,” the source said.

According to him, the younger elements in the both parties are worried that the alliance talks between CPC and ACN may be moving towards a joint presidential ticket comprising Buhari and Tinubu. 

“A joint Buhari-Tinubu ticket would mean closing the doors to the younger elements that have something to offer in the next dispensation,” he added.

On the terms of the talks between CPC and ACN, the source said, “From the initial talks, what is on the ground is an alliance and not a merger. We are discussing the possibility of presenting a unified presidential candidate and cooperating in subsequent elections and not an outright merger where one party will be subsumed by the other.” 

Asked to clarify what he meant by an alliance, the source said, “By cooperating during elections as contemplated in the 2015 presidential election,” adding, “the details are not known yet; with time, everything will become clearer.”

The CPC national secretary, Buba Galadima, when contacted on whether Buhari would contest the 2015 presidential election, simply said, “Buhari is a leader in CPC.

“He is qualified to contest for the presidential election, but the decision depends on him. You just wait and see as everything unfolds after all, power is from Allah.”

However, the PDP said it was not bothered about the rumoured alliance between the two parties. According to the PDP spokesman, Metu, “As a party, we are determined not be bothered by the unholy alliance of the ACN and the CPC whose ultimate target is to distract our irreversible commitment to the transformation of Nigeria.”

THE NIGERIAN JOINT TASK FORCE,(JTF) BURST BOKO HARAM'S HIDOUT IN JOS.

The military, police and members of the State Security Services were all involved in the joint security effort.
A statement by the spokesman of the STF, Captain Markus Mdahyela, revealed that the hideout was discovered by the security operatives following intelligence reports on a location where six women and 11 children of alleged Boko Haram members were kept in solitary confinement.
 According to the statement, arms and ammunition and improvised explosive devices were recovered from the hideout while one of the improvised explosive devices, detonated during the operation but no casualty was recorded.
“The first operation on Thursday 17th May, led to the rescue of six women and eleven children while items recovered from the bungalow include a laptop, external hard disk, eight cell phones, 23 SIM cards and 19 improvised explosive detonators, the statement read.”
The women and children were all rescued for further investigation and rehabilitation, the statement adds.
On further search in the early hours of Saturday, Captain  Mdahyela, stated that, one ak 47, four magazines fully loaded with 7.62mm special and 150m rounds of 7.62 special , 347 rounds of 9mm were also discovered.
Other items recovered are eight bags of urea nitrate fertilizer, two generators, four improvise explosive devices, 395 snipper ammo, 60mm cortex blue wire and other dangerous weapons.

More ammunitions

The Special Task Force statement warned citizens not to allow their houses to be used by terrorists as it will be demolished
It also advised landlords and agents to thoroughly screen tenants and report suspected persons to appropriate security agencies.
Meanwhile, the terrorists’ hideout and environs have been placed under heavy military surveillance.
Plateau state has witnessed repeated bomb explosions claimed by the fundamentalist sect that has been raging an insurgency in the northern part of the country.

FORMER MINISTER KICKS AGAINST DIALOGUE WITH BOKO HARAM

Speaking at a public lecture in honour of late Ijaw nationalist, Adaka Boro, in Abuja,  Mr Fani-Kayode said there is an urgent need for the federal government to bring the current security challenges under control by bringing the full weight of the law to bear on all terrorists.
The sect has in recent years being staging insurgency against the Nigerian government, using series of suicide bombings and strategic bomb blasts, jail breaks, attacks on police stations and academic institutions across the northern part of Nigeria.
Also speaking at the occasion, chairman of the Ijaw youth council, Abuja branch, Mr Francis Tambai appealed to youths from the north not to allow themselves to be used by persons who are bent on destroying the peace of the nation.
Vice-president, Namadi Sambo at a recent function in Abuja, declared that the federal government is willing to engage in dialogue with the sect.
More details to follow soon.