Peace Negotiations Watch Thursday, October 4, 2007 Volume VI, Number 31

In this issue:

Afghanistan New efforts to free Red Cross workers in Afghanistan Mohammad Yaqob, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07 Karzai's office sees 'serious debate' among Taliban about laying down arms Jason Straziuso, Associated Press, 9/30/07 Taliban refuse latest Karzai peace talks offer; Violence kills 270 over the last week Noor Khan, Associated Press, 9/30/07

Bosnia and Herzegovina EU says agreement on police reform reached in Bosnia is not good enough Aida Cerkez-Robinson, Associated Press, 10/1/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Burma Myanmar's deadly crackdown sparks global condemnation, regime faces new isolation Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press, 9/28/07 Diplomats, rights groups struggle to count dead following Myanmar crackdown Michael Casey, Associated Press, 10/2/07 U.N. officials say envoy to meet with Myanmar leader, after days of stalling by junta Associated Press, 10/2/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Burma

Burundi Burundi president, opposition reach deal Agence France Presse, 9/27/07

Chechnya Under an Iron Hand, a Rebirth of a Battered Republic Subdued by Russia C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 9/30/07

Cyprus US urges new UN envoy for Cyprus talks Agence France Presse, 9/27/07 Cypriot president confident Syria will not recognize breakaway state despite ferry spat Alexandra Olson, Associated Press, 9/28/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Cyprus

Democratic Republic of the Congo DRC protests to Uganda after six die in border clash Agence France Presse, 9/26/07 UN refugee agency warns on DRC violence Agence France Presse, 9/29/07 Deadline extended for DRCongo disarmament programme Agence France Presse, 10/1/07 Access the DR Congo Negotiation Simulation prepared by PILPG

Georgia Georgia, South Ossetia blame each other for skirmish Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili, Associated Press, 9/27/07 Helped to power by protests, Georgia's leader now faces demonstrations Daria Vaisman, Associated Press, 9/30/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Georgia

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast restarts identity card program in step toward elections Parfait Kouassi, Associated Press, 9/25/07 ICoast leader urges lifting of UN sanctions Agence France Presse, 9/26/07 Ivory Coast opposition leader tells supporters to seek change through elections Parfait Kouassi, Associated Press, 9/27/07

Kashmir Police: 2 Islamic rebels killed in mosque siege in Indian Kashmir Aijaz Hussain, Associated Press, 9/30/07 India to look at stopping 'terror' investors Pratap Chakravarty, Agence France Presse, 10/1/07 Access the Kashmir Negotiation Simulation prepared by PILPG

Kosovo Serbia's prime minister pledges Kosovo will never be independent Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press, 9/26/07 No breakthrough in Kosovo meeting, more talks in October Indalecio Alvarez, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07 Kosovo, region risk turmoil if solution is delayed, U.N. chief warns in report Nebi Qena, Associated Press, 10/2/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Kosovo

Macedonia Greece wants Macedonia name issue resolved Elena Becatoros, Associated Press, 9/27/07

Morocco Morocco; Western Sahara Dispute at Turning Point, Says Minister U.N. News Service, 10/1/07

Nepal Maoists say Nepal army planning coup to save monarchy Deepesh Shrestha, Agence France Presse, 9/26/07 Nepal delays dates for filing election nominations while reconciliation talks go on Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 10/1/07 Nepal's largest newspaper office attacked by ex-communist rebels' union Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 10/1/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Nepal

Philippines Update: Philippine army clashes with alleged militants, leaving at least 15 dead Xinhua General News Service, 10/2/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in the Philippines

Somalia Somali government teeters as chaos grows; Longing for days of warlords past Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, 9/28/07 Troops forcing residents from homes in Somali capital, rights group says Salad Duhul, Associated Press, 9/30/07 At least 10 killed as Somaliland, Puntland fight over town Mustafa Haji Abdinur, Agence France Presse, 10/1/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Somalia

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka president appeals for help at U.N. in reconstructing war-torn east Paul Burkhardt, Associated Press, 9/26/07 Military: Violence in northern Sri Lanka kills 25 rebels, 3 civilians, 1 soldier Ravi Nessman, Associated Press, 9/27/07 Sri Lankan foreign minister rejects demands for U.N. human rights monitoring mission Foster Klug, Associated Press, 10/1/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Sri Lanka

Sudan Humanitarian workers face increased threats amid Darfur's chaos Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press, 9/27/07 Security Council condemns "murderous attack" on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, 10/2/07 African Union vows justice for killers of Darfur peacekeepers Mohamed Hasni, Agence France Presse, 10/2/07 Learn about PILPG’s work in Sudan

Uganda DRC protests to Uganda after six die in border clash Agence France Presse, 9/26/07 Ugandan troops accused of plundering prized trees in south Sudan Bogonko Bosire, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07 Uganda urges world leaders to put pressure on rebels in peace talks Lily Hindy, Associated Press, 10/1/07

Peace Negotiations Watch is a weekly publication detailing current events relating to conflict and peace processes in selected countries. It is prepared by the Public International Law & Policy Group (PILPG) and made possible by grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Ploughshares Fund.

Afghanistan

New efforts to free Red Cross workers in Afghanistan Mohammad Yaqob, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07

Afghan negotiators worked Friday to secure the release of four Red Cross workers, two of them foreigners, who were captured during a mission to free a German kidnapped by Taliban.

Contact had been made with the group that seized the men on Wednesday in the province of Wardak, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Kabul, said the governor of Sayed Abad district where they were taken.

"We are in contact with the kidnappers via tribal elders and influentials," said the district governor, Anayatullah Mangal.

Mangal gave no details of the abductors whom he described Thursday as "armed thieves." Spokesmen for the hardline Islamic Taliban movement, which has kidnapped several Afghans and foreigners in Afghanistan, initially flatly denied their network was involved.

But one, Zabihullah Mujahid, said Friday that the movement was still getting in touch with all its allies in Wardak province to see if any were involved.

"We have contacted almost all mujahedin (holy fighters) active in Wardak area and they reported that they don't know yet who abducted the Red Cross employees," he told AFP. "But we still cannot totally rule out the possibility they might have been kidnapped by some Taliban group."

Mujahid said that if Taliban had captured the International Committee of the Red Cross men, they would be immediately released with no conditions.

"The Red Cross has a good background in Afghanistan and we must cooperate with them. They must not be harmed by any side of the conflict," he said.

Mangal said the Red Cross had asked authorities to refrain from military action to free the four for their own safety.

"The issue must be solved via mediation through tribal elders," he said.

The ICRC has not said the men were kidnapped but only that they were "detained" while driving back to Kabul after their mission in Wardak, where the 62-year-old German engineer and five Afghans were captured 10 weeks ago.

Besides the two Afghans, one of the men was from Myanmar and another from Macedonia, the global group, which has been in Afghanistan since 1987 towards the end of the Russian occupation.

"We are in contact with all the involved parties," spokeswoman Graziella Leite Piccolo said in Kabul. An "armed group" was involved in the abduction, she said, without elaborating.

The incident comes after a string of abductions of foreigners in Afghanistan, some claimed by the insurgent Taliban movement and some blamed on criminals seeking ransom.

The ICRC has played crucial roles in facilitating the release of some of the Taliban's other hostages, including 21 South Korean Christian aid workers captured mid-July and released in August.

The 21 were freed after talks between the rebels and Seoul that were facilitated by the Red Cross. Before the negotiations, the Taliban killed two other South Korean hostages.

The insurgent movement, which was in government until late 2001, said afterwards it would kidnap more foreign nationals as abductions were an effective way to pressure the Afghan government and its international allies.

A Bangladeshi national with a development organization was abducted in Logar province, adjoining Wardak and Kabul provinces, on September 15 and has not been released. The Taliban have not claimed involvement and his captors appear to be criminals after ransom.

Afghan police announced Friday, meanwhile, that they had freed two employees of the government's rural development ministry who were abducted in the southern province of Nimroz with their driver 15 days ago.

Counter-terrorism police had "put pressure" on the kidnappers through local leaders and were able to arrest five people involved in the kidnapping, Nimroz province police chief Mohammad Daud Askaryar said. Karzai's office sees 'serious debate' among Taliban about laying down arms Jason Straziuso, Associated Press, 9/30/07

President Hamid Karzai's office said Sunday that there is "serious debate" among some Taliban fighters about laying down arms, though a spokesman for the group said the insurgents will "never" negotiate with Afghan authorities until foreign troops leave.

Meanwhile, clashes and airstrikes killed 16 people, capping a week that saw more than 270 people dying in insurgency-related violence.

Karzai said Saturday he would be willing to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and give militants a position in government in exchange for peace. On Sunday, Karzai spokesman Humayun Hamidzada stressed that the militants would have to accept Afghanistan's constitution.

However, Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi repeated a position he had announced earlier this month, saying there would be no negotiations until U.S. and NATO troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

"The Taliban will never negotiate with the Afghan government in the presence of foreign forces," Ahmadi told The Associated Press. "Even if Karzai gives up his presidency, it's not possible that Mullah Omar would agree to negotiations. The foreign forces don't have the authority to talk about Afghanistan."

But Karzai's spokesman said the government has information of a "serious debate" among some groups of Taliban about how long militants want to keep fighting. The U.N. and NATO have also said they see similar indications.

"They want to live in peace and have a comfortable life with their families," Hamidzada said. "There is serious debate within their ranks, but this is a process that takes time."

Karzai traveled to the U.N. General Assembly in New York days ago, and Hamidzada said that among the U.N. Secretary-General and the foreign ministers of many countries, "everyone with one voice said we need a comprehensive strategy in dealing with the Taliban both military and diplomatic components."

He said Karzai and U.S. President George W. Bush also spoke generally about the Taliban reconciliation process and said Bush also supports such initiatives, though it was not clear if that would include broader Taliban peace talks beyond the individual reconciliation process that has seen more than 4,500 fighters lay down their arms in the last two years.

Karzai's latest peace overture came as insurgency-related violence continued. Thirty people, mostly army soldiers, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a military bus Saturday in Kabul.

More than 270 have died in violence since last Sunday 180 of them militants, according to an AP tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.

In the latest violence, insurgents ambushed a convoy of foreign troops in eastern Paktia province on Saturday. After a brief gunbattle, airstrikes were called in that killed 11 militants, a provincial police official said Sunday on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak publicly.

The U.S. coalition said it was not involved in the battle, and NATO was looking into the report.

Another battle in Paktia between police and militants on Saturday left one suspected insurgent dead, the police official said.

In neighboring Ghazni province, coalition forces fought with insurgents, killing two Taliban on Saturday in Andar district, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman. Police in Kandahar city discovered a land mine that exploded while they were trying to defuse it, killing two police, said Kandahar deputy provincial police chief Abdul Hakim Hungar.

Military officials said they expected a spike in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, based on an increase in attacks last year during the same period.

The death toll this week includes more than 165 militants killed during two battles between the Taliban and joint Afghan-coalition forces, and the 30 soldiers and civilians killed in the Kabul suicide bombing.

Militant attacks and military operations have killed more than 4,600 people so far this year, most of them insurgents, according to the AP count.

Associated Press reporters Noor Khan in Kandahar and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.

Taliban refuse latest Karzai peace talks offer; Violence kills 270 over the last week Noor Khan, Associated Press, 9/30/07

The Taliban will "never" negotiate with Afghan authorities until U.S. and NATO forces leave the country, a spokesman for the group said Sunday, again rebuffing an overture for peace talks from President Hamid Karzai.

Clashes and airstrikes, meanwhile, killed 14 suspected Taliban on Saturday, capping a week that saw more than 270 people killed in insurgency-related violence.

Karzai said Saturday he would be willing to meet personally with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and give militants a position in government in exchange for peace. But Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi repeated a position he announced earlier this month, saying there would be no negotiations until U.S. and NATO troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

"The Taliban will never negotiate with the Afghan government in the presence of foreign forces," Ahmadi told The Associated Press. "Even if Karzai gives up his presidency, it's not possible that Mullah Omar would agree to negotiations. The foreign forces don't have the authority to talk about Afghanistan."

Karzai's peace overture came as insurgency-related violence continued to climb. Thirty people, mostly army soldiers, were killed in a suicide bomb attack on a military bus Saturday in Kabul.

More than 270 have died in violence since last Sunday 180 of them militants, according to an Associated Press tally of figures from Afghan and Western officials.

In the latest violence, insurgents ambushed a convoy of foreign troops in eastern Paktia province on Saturday. After a brief gunbattle airstrikes were called in that killed 11 militants, a provincial police official said Sunday on condition of anonymity because he was unauthorized to speak publicly.

The U.S. coalition said it was not involved in the battle, and NATO also did not have any information on the incident.

Another battle in Paktia between police and militants on Saturday left one suspected insurgent dead, the police official said.

In neighboring Ghazni province, coalition forces fought with insurgents, killing two Taliban on Saturday in Andar district, said deputy provincial police chief Mohammad Zaman.

Ghazni is the province where the 23 South Korean hostages were captured in July. Two of the hostages were killed, and the rest were later released after talks between the Taliban and a South Korean government delegation.

Military officials said they expected a spike in violence during the holy month of Ramadan based on an increase in attacks last year during the same period.

The death toll this week includes more than 165 militants killed during two battles between the Taliban and joint Afghan-coalition forces, and the 30 soldiers and civilians killed in the Kabul suicide bombing.

Militant attacks and military operations have killed more than 4,600 people so far this year, most of them insurgents, according to the AP count.

Associated Press reporter Rahim Faiez contributed to this report from Kabul.

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Bosnia and Herzegovina

EU says agreement on police reform reached in Bosnia is not good enough Aida Cerkez-Robinson, Associated Press, 10/1/07

A new agreement on how to merge Bosnia's ethnically divided police forces is not good enough to allow Bosnia to make the next step toward joining the European Union, international officials said Monday. But they did not say publicly what was wrong with the agreement.

Bosnia's political rivals signed the agreement Friday after almost two year of disagreement and difficult negotiations.

The European Union has told Bosnia it must merge the two forces, make the new police department effective and ensure it is free of political influence if it wants to take the next step toward joining the EU.

Friday's agreement on police reform was made by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik and Bosniak leader Haris Silajdzic, and it was submitted two days before Sunday's EU deadline.

However, Bosnia's top international official, Slovak diplomat Miroslav Lajcak, who also represents the EU, said Monday that the document was not enough "for the stabilization and association process to continue."

"We still don't have a political agreement that has the support of the necessary majority and that is in line with the three European principles," Lajcak said. While the agreement was made by the two most influential parties in Bosnia, it has not been approved by other parties represented in the Parliament.

Lajcak also said the agreement "leaves some important issues open," without elaborating. Lajcak and EU Commissioner for enlargement Olli Rehn agreed that Bosnia would be given a "few more days" to come up with a satisfactory solution.

"Therefore we, the European Union and the international community, expect the leaders of Bosnia- Herzegovina to do their utmost and achieve an agreement that will fulfill European conditions and have the necessary political support," Lajcak said.

The Dayton peace agreement that ended three and a half years of war in 1995 divided the country into a Serb Republic and a Bosniak-Croat Federation. Since then, almost all the ethnically divided structures of government have been merged, including the army, in which Serbs, Muslim Bosniaks and Croats serve together but not the police forces. The separation of the police forces has allowed criminals to escape capture by crossing between jurisdictions. In many cases, police officers from one territory of Bosnia cannot communicate by radio to their counterparts in the other part of the country.

Bosnian Serbs had been wary of giving up their separate force, fearing it may lead to the loss of their separate territory within Bosnia. Bosniak leaders have pressed for a completely merged police force, hoping it will lead to the complete unification of the country.

The European Commission is about to complete its annual evaluation of the progress Bosnia has achieved. Police reform is the only remaining condition for the signing of the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU.

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Burma

Myanmar's deadly crackdown sparks global condemnation, regime faces new isolation Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press, 9/28/07

Myanmar's crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators drew condemnation and sparked protests Friday, with the top U.S. diplomat in the reclusive nation calling the violence "tragic" and the European Union denouncing "gross and systematic violations of human rights."

The United Nations said it will convene an emergency session on human rights abuses and dispatched an envoy to Myanmar who could arrive as early as Saturday. Britain demanded an end to "oppression and force" against the demonstrators.

Myanmar's Asian neighbors expressed "revulsion" at the violence and urged the military rulers to seek a political solution. Japan said it had asked China to use its influence with junta to resolve the crisis. In neighboring Thailand, officials said airplanes were standing by to evacuate foreigners if conditions deteriorated further.

On Friday, soldiers clubbed activists in the streets and occupied Buddhist monasteries to try to put down the largest protests since 1988. The government said 10 people have been killed since Wednesday, although exile groups say the toll may be much higher.

Following telephone talks with U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said "we believe the loss of life is far greater than is being reported so far."

The regime cut public Internet access, blocking one of the few avenues to get information about the protests out of the country where few foreign journalists are allowed to operate and media freedom is severely restricted. The junta has ignored international pleas for restraint.

"The military was out in force before they even gathered and moved quickly as small groups appeared breaking them up with gunfire, tear gas and clubs," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press by phone.

"It's tragic. These were peaceful demonstrators, very well-behaved," she said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt told The Associated Press that ASEAN diplomats and Myanmar officials "have had a rough dialogue" on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly this week. He said the response from Myanmar diplomats was muted, with no assurances that they will reverse the crackdown or engage in dialogue with the opposition.

The U.S. tightened sanctions on Myanmar, saying it would freeze any assets held by 14 top officials in the junta within U.S. jurisdiction, and banning U.S. citizens from doing business with them.

"Clearly the government of Burma, the regime there, is facing a population that does not want to suffer quietly under its rule anymore," said U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey in Washington.

"We are calling on them to do the right thing, to do what the people deserve and open a dialogue with them, with the legitimate political opposition, including to release those that they hold in detention and to start the long overdue process of national reconciliation and the creation of a country in which all Burmese are free to participate."

The U.N. special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, headed to the country to promote a political solution and could arrive as early as Saturday, one Western diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

In Geneva, diplomats said the U.N. Human Rights Council said they would call an emergency session on Myanmar on Tuesday after a petition led by Western countries gained the support of one third of the body's 47 nations.

The European Union expressed "solidarity with the people of Myanmar," saying they were exercising their rights of peaceful demonstration.

"We strongly condemn all violence against peaceful demonstrators," an EU statement said, adding that European nations were "strongly concerned with the gross and systematic violations of human rights in Myanmar."

The EU said peer pressure from neighboring countries was crucial to resolving the crisis. EU envoys are examining additional sanctions on Myanmar. The EU also urged the release of all political prisoners in Myanmar, also known as Burma, including opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who has been detained for about 12 of the past 18 years.

Italy's foreign ministry said it is exploring a possible European Union mission to Myanmar while trying to persuade China, Russia and India to put pressure on Myanmar's military regime.

"The Italian government is exploring with the Portuguese presidency (of the EU) possibly dispatching a European Union mission in Myanmar to flank the mission of U.N. envoy (Ibrahim) Gambari," Italy's foreign ministry said in a statement.

Britain's Brown praised the protesters and called for tougher EU sanctions.

"I had hoped that the Burmese regime would heed the calls for restraint from the international community. But once again they have responded with oppression and force. This must cease."

Brown said he intended to speak about the crisis on Friday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Bush.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which Myanmar is a member of, said it was "appalled" by the violence. "They expressed their revulsion to Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win," the group said in a statement Thursday in New York.

Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said he agreed in a phone call with his Chinese counterpart to work together on international efforts to solve the crisis. "I asked that China, given its close ties with Myanmar, exercise its influence and Premier Wen said he will make such efforts," Fukuda told reporters in Tokyo on Friday.

China is Myanmar's main economic and political ally, while Japan is its largest aid donor. Fukuda ruled out immediate sanctions against Myanmar in connection with the death of a Japanese journalist during the crackdown. Japan has said it would press Myanmar for an explanation of the death of 50-year-old APF News journalist Kenji Nagai on Thursday. "Sanctions are not the best step to take now," Fukuda told reporters.

The crackdown put China in a bind. It has developed close diplomatic ties with junta leaders and is a major investor in Myanmar. But with the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, China is eager to fend off criticism that it props up unpopular or abusive regimes.

China has so far refused to intervene, calling the protests an internal affair that did not threaten regional or global stability, the criteria for action by the U.N. Security Council.

Chinese officials say the international community may be overestimating China's influence over the regime, echoing earlier statements by Chinese academics and diplomats.

On Wednesday, China refused to condemn Myanmar and ruled out imposing sanctions, but for the first time agreed to a U.N. Security Council statement expressing concern over the violent crackdown and urging the military rulers to allow in a U.N. envoy.

Russia expressed concern about the "continuing deterioration of the domestic political situation in Myanmar."

In Malaysia's largest city, Kuala Lumpur, about 2,000 Myanmar immigrants rallied peacefully outside their country's embassy.

Smaller demonstrations against the junta took place in Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines.

In London, a dozen Burmese monks led about 200 dissidents and activists in prayer at the door of Myanmar's Embassy before marching to 10 Downing Street to demonstrate.

Diplomats, rights groups struggle to count dead following Myanmar crackdown Michael Casey, Associated Press, 10/2/07

One hundred shot dead outside a Myanmar school. Activists burned alive at government crematoriums. A Buddhist monk floating face down in a river.

After last week's brutal crackdown by the military, horror stories are filling Myanmar blogs and dissident sites. But the tight security of the repressive regime makes it impossible to verify just how many people are dead, detained or missing.

"There are huge difficulties. It's a closed police state," said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand. "Many of the witnesses have been arrested and are being held in areas we don't have access to. Other eyewitness are too afraid."

Authorities have acknowledged that government troops shot dead nine demonstrators and a Japanese cameraman in Yangon. But witness accounts range from several dozen deaths to as many as 200.

"We do believe the death toll is higher than acknowledged by the government," Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told The Associated Press Monday. "We are doing our best to get more precise, more detailed information, not only in terms of deaths but also arrests." Villarosa said her staff had visited up to 15 monasteries around Yangon and every single one was empty. She put the number of arrested demonstrators monks and civilians in the thousands.

"I know the monks are not in their monasteries," she said. "Where are they? How many are dead? How many are arrested?"

She said the true death toll may never be known in a Buddhist country where bodies are cremated.

"We're not going to find graves like they did in Yugoslavia ... We have seen few dead bodies. The bodies are removed promptly. We don't know where they are being taken," Villarosa said.

Dissident groups have been collecting accounts from witnesses and the families of victims, and investigating reports of dead bodies turning up at hospitals and cemeteries in and around Yangon.

The U.S. Campaign For Burma, a Washington-based pro-democracy group, says more than 100 people were killed in downtown Yangon after truckloads of government troops fired automatic weapons last Thursday at thousands of demonstrators. It also claims that 100 students and parents were killed the same day at a high school in Tamwe, in northeastern Yangon, after troops shot at them as school let out.

The Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based dissident news organization, has received reports of soldiers burning protesters alive at the Yae Way cemetery crematorium on the outskirts of Yangon. The group also shot video Sunday of a dead monk, badly beaten and floating face down in a Yangon river.

The Democratic Voice of Burma has put the death toll at 138, based on a list compiled by the 88 Student Generation, a pro-democracy group operating in Myanmar.

"This 138 figure is quite credible because it's based on names of victims," Aye Chan Naing, the chief editor, told the AP Monday. "I also think the figure is accurate because of the pictures coming from inside Burma. The way they were shooting into the crowds with machine guns means dozens of people could have died."

The Democratic Voice of Burma also estimates that about 6,000 demonstrators including at least 1,400 monks from seven now-empty monasteries are being held at makeshift detention centers set up at universities, old factories and a race track in Yangon. There are already an estimated 1,100 political prisoners languishing in Myanmar's jails.

The military junta did not respond to AP requests for comment Monday. It is impossible to independently verify the death toll because Myanmar is virtually off-limits to journalists.

Lars Bromley of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington said his agency has ordered up satellite images of four Myanmar cities, including Yangon, since the crackdown. He said satellite imagery along with clear skies and exact locations from witnesses could help locate massacre sites, and also give some sense of the military presence around cities and monasteries.

"If there are several suspected burial sites, we could help narrow it down or identify the site," said Bromley, who last week uncovered evidence that Myanmar's military destroyed border villages and forcibly relocated ethnic minorities in eastern Myanmar last year. "But we need a little information to go on."

Most analysts said the fallout from the protests was not surprising, given the regime's history of brutality. It may be impossible to ever verify how many people are dead or detained.

"We cannot say exactly and we are unlikely to know for sure," Win Hlaing of the dissident group National League for Democracy-Liberated Area said of the death toll. "(But) the junta never declares the real number of people killed."

Myanmar's military also opened fire on the country's 1988 democratic uprising. Human Rights Watch estimates that at least 3,000 protesters were killed, but other reports cite up to 10,000. The media, diplomats and activists have been denied access to documents that could shed light on the shootings.

And so, to this day, the exact death toll remains shrouded in secrecy.

U.N. officials say envoy to meet with Myanmar leader, after days of stalling by junta Associated Press, 10/2/07

A U.N. envoy was scheduled to meet with Myanmar's military leader Tuesday to deliver the international community's demands for an end to the junta's deadly crackdown on democracy advocates, after several days of stall tactics.

Security forces lightened their presence in Yangon, the country's main city, which remained quiet after troops and police brutally quelled mass protests last week. Dissident groups say up to 200 protesters were slain, compared to the regime's report of 10 deaths, and 6,000 detained.

Ibrabim Gambari, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy to Myanmar, has been in the country since Saturday with the express purpose of seeing Senior Gen. Than Shwe, but the junta's top man did not make himself immediately available.

That should change later Tuesday when Gambari has been granted an appointment with Than Shwe in Myanmar's remote new capital, Naypyitaw, said U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe in New York.

Than Shwe generally does not bother with standard diplomatic protocol and is notoriously difficult to meet with. In previous sparring with the United Nations and other international bodies over human rights abuses, the regime has repeatedly snubbed envoys and ignored diplomatic overtures.

Instead of the meeting Gambari sought Monday, the envoy was sent to a remote northern town for an academic conference on relations between the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, diplomats reported, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The town of Lashio, where the conference was held, is 390 kilometers (240 miles) north of Naypyitaw, the secure, isolated city carved out of the jungle where Than Shwe moved the capital in 2005.

U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said Gambari would urge the junta "to cease the repression of peaceful protest, release detainees, and move more credibly and inclusively in the direction of democratic reform, human rights and national reconciliation."

Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Nyan Win defended the crackdown as essential to restore order.

"The security personnel exercised utmost restraint and they did not intervene for nearly a month. However, when the mob became unruly and provocative, they were compelled to declare a curfew. Subsequently, when protesters ignored their warnings, they had to take action to restore the situation," the foreign minister said.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the U.S. wanted to see Gambari convey a clear message on behalf of the world body "about the need for Burma's leaders to engage in a real and serious political dialogue with all relative parties."

He said that included talking with Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate who has been under house arrest for years. Gambari was allowed to meet with Suu Kyi on Sunday. In Yangon, soldiers dismantled roadblocks in the middle of the city and moved to the outskirts, but riot police still checked cars and buses and monitored the streets from helicopters.

Most shops stayed closed and traffic was lighter than usual. After keeping Buddhist monasteries sealed off for several days because of their prominent role in the protests, authorities let some monks go out to collect food donations, but soldiers kept watch on them.

Protests against the government ignited Aug. 19 after it hiked fuel prices as much as 500 percent, but public anger ballooned into mass demonstrations led by Buddhist monks against 45 years of military dictatorship.

Soldiers responded last week by shooting at unarmed demonstrators.

Opposition groups say several thousand people were arrested, including many monks who were dragged out of their monasteries and locked up. Many demonstrators were reported held in makeshift prisons at old factories, a race track and universities around Yangon.

It was impossible to independently verify the reports in the tightly controlled nation. Some 70 detainees were released Monday in Yangon, according to Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based news magazine.

Many people who ventured out Monday in Yangon felt the junta had defeated the biggest pro-democracy demonstrations since 1988, when another brutal crackdown killed an estimated 3,000 protesters. "The people are angry but afraid. Many are poor and struggling in life so they don't join the protests anymore. The monks are weak because they were subjected to attacks," said Theta, a 30-year-old university graduate who drives a taxi and gave only his first name.

He and others who agreed to talk about the protests spoke on condition their identities not be revealed, fearing retaliation by security forces.

An Asian diplomat said Monday that all the arrested monks had been defrocked stripped of their highly revered status and were likely to face long jail terms. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

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Burundi

Burundi president, opposition reach deal Agence France Presse, 9/27/07

Burundi's president said Thursday a deal had been reached with the opposition to end a months-old political deadlock in the troubled central African nation.

"We have held consultations with the heads of the political parties represented in parliament and we have agreed on a number of solutions," President Pierre Nkurunziza said in an address to the nation.

Burundi has been locked in a bruising political impasse for months, as tensions rose between opposition movements and the president's party, which no longer controls enough of parliament to pass laws.

Nkurunziza said the agreement involved guaranteeing more freedom to political parties, fighting corruption, granting jobs to opposition supporters in the administration and moving towards a professional army and police.

The main Frodebu opposition party confirmed a deal had been reached with the president and his CNDD- FDD party.

"We are optimistic but we shall wait to see how all this materialize," a senior Frodebu official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Nkurunziza launched the consultations on August 20, after tensions with the opposition culminated in grenade attacks on the homes of opposition and dissident lawmakers.

The government denied any involvement in the attacks but the opposition had the urged the president to open a dialogue aimed at breaking the stalemate in Burundi, which is still slowly emerging from 14 years of civil war.

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Chechnya

Under an Iron Hand, a Rebirth of a Battered Republic Subdued by Russia C.J. Chivers, The New York Times, 9/30/07

In the evenings, unexpected sights appear in this city, which less than two years ago seemed beyond saving and repair.

Women stroll on sidewalks that did not exist last year. Teenagers cluster under newly installed street lights, chatting on cellphones. At a street corner, young men gather to race cars on a freshly paved road - a scene, considering that this is the capital of Chechnya, that feels out of place and from another time.

Throughout the city, local officials, most of them former rebels who waged a nationalist Islamic insurgency against Russia, lounge in cafes, assault rifles beside them.

Three years after a wave of guerrilla and terrorist attacks caused many analysts to say that Russia's war against Chechen separatists could not be won, the republic has fallen almost fully under the control of the Kremlin and its indigenous proxies, led by Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen president.

Kadyrov's human rights record is chilling, and allegations of his government's patterns of brutality and impunity are widespread. Yet even his most severe critics say he has developed significant popular support, in part because of the clear changes that have accompanied his firm and fearsome rule.

Fighting has been sporadic and small in scale for a second year. A large rebel offensive did not materialize this summer, as the separatists had predicted. Buoyed by a sustained lull in fighting and flush with cash, Kadyrov's government has rebuilt most of its capital and outlying areas.

Like Stalingrad after World War II, Grozny, the Chechen capital, has reappeared from the rubble. It has done so more swiftly than European cities revived by the Marshall Plan.

As recently as early 2006, Grozny was less a city than rows of shattered buildings overlooking cesspools. It now has electricity almost around the clock and reliable natural gas service. Many neighborhoods have water. Block upon block of housing complexes have been rebuilt, and families have moved into apartment buildings that a year ago were buckling shells. Markets are crowded with products, from laptop computers and office furniture to air conditioners, flat- panel televisions and new cars.

Improvements have also been made in outlying towns, and services are being extended into the Caucasus Mountains, the separatists' former stronghold. Many residents speak of a degree of peace they had not seen in 13 years.

''I compare how we used to live, and it is like we are in a fairy tale now,'' said Zulika Aliyeva, 46, whose home was destroyed during Russia's sacking of Grozny in 1999 and 2000 and who spent years squatting in a ruined building. The building she moved to recently has been partly repaired.

Alexei Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center who studies Chechnya and recently visited the republic again, said the pace of change was astounding. ''I couldn't believe I was in Grozny,'' he said.

Russia's military defeat of the heart of the rebellion in Chechnya appears to flow, in the simplest sense, from a two-stage formula: extraordinary violence, followed by extraordinary investment. One corollary has been that allegations of human rights abuses by Russia and its local allies have been largely ignored.

At the center of this formula has been Kadyrov, the rebel-turned-Kremlin ally who was widely labeled an illiterate bandit when he entered public life three years ago after his father, the president then, was assassinated by a bomb.

Kadyrov, like the republic he leads, has defied the dark projections. As Chechnya's president since this spring, he has become a populist who has managed to embrace Sufi Islam, Chechen ethnic identity and Kremlin authority simultaneously.

His success has a paradoxical quality to it. Paramilitary units in his government are suspected of kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings. Combat has not fully stopped and sporadic fighting has spread to neighboring republics. Large graves are full of unidentified remains - the victims, human rights advocates say, of a campaign to kill people suspected of being insurgents and punish their families.

But several local people, each of whom had complaints about corruption in the reconstruction programs or inequities in the policies of distributing restored housing, praised him.

Kadyrov, they said, has driven his government to work and forced government-hired contractors to meet his harsh deadlines. ''They are afraid of Ramzan,'' said Linda Saraliyeva, 28, one of Aliyeva's neighbors. ''What he has done in only one year, no one else has managed to do.''

Chechen officials say that security conditions have improved so much that the republic, closed to outsiders, hopes to reduce its checkpoints and allow foreigners to visit as soon as next year.

The government, in a sign of confidence that detractors say is bizarre, has begun working on a tourism plan, hoping it will lure outsiders to the mountains and hiking and horseback trails. One small hotel has opened. Construction of a five-star hotel, connected to a sports complex, is planned.

''We have found that many people would like to come to Chechnya,'' said Igor Garayev, an adviser to the Chechen minister responsible for athletics and tourism. ''In a year or two, we will see people coming here.''

Another sign of physical recovery and ebbing hostility is the competition for housing. Before the war, Grozny had about 79,000 apartments, said Rizvan Bakharchiyev, one of the city's deputy mayors. The city government expects to be able to restore about 45,000 apartments in all; the rest, he said, were in buildings that were destroyed. Already multiple families are seeking the same apartments, claiming to have owned them before the war, or to have bought them since.

Aliyeva, for example, has been told to leave the apartment in which she and her family survived the war by a man who has said he is its owner. Other abandoned apartments, now slated for repair, have cellphone numbers painted on their walls beside the word ''owner'' or ''master,'' in a warning that the unit is claimed.

Bakharchiyev said the city's population, decimated by violence, disease and flight, was rising swiftly. ''I think we will soon have more people than before the war,'' he said.

Support for Kadyrov is by no means complete. In one enduring slum known locally as Shanghai, residents said they were being forced to move to worse housing - tiny wood-framed huts in a field polluted by oil - because their land was now valuable to Grozny's new real estate speculators. ''What can I think of Ramzan?'' said one young woman, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her. ''They evict us with lies.''

Chechnya, human rights advocates say, also remains plagued by problems, albeit on a smaller scale than before.

A large fraction of the population is employed in reconstruction jobs, but Memorial, a private human rights organization, said many workers had not received their wages, or received less than promised.

Abductions have declined but have not stopped altogether. The suspected kidnappers, many of them in the local police, face little threat of punishment, Estemirova said.

In Grozny, a few buildings have been rebuilt on the outside only, and remain ruins inside or only partly finished - the result of what some residents said was construction fraud. The means by which the vast and almost instantaneous program of reconstruction has been underwritten has also not been clear.

Bakharchiyev, the deputy mayor, said roughly half of the reconstruction was paid for by the Akhmad Kadyrov Fund, named for Kadyrov's father. The fund is not open to outside scrutiny; its holdings and financial sources are not publicly known.

Several Grozny residents, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety, said one financing source was extortion of contractors and government workers, who are required to donate. There is also, officials said, graft on a monumental scale.

Part of Chechnya's territory is above an oil field. One government official said Kadyrov and his government diverted large quantities of oil and sold it on black markets. Some of the profit, the official said, underwrites reconstruction. How much is misappropriated is not clear.

The insurgency, though diminished, is still a factor. Malashenko said that as many as several hundred fighters remain, although they do not appear as well organized or equipped as before. Sarah Mendelson, a director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, said it was too soon to say that Chechnya had recovered.

Its lingering problems, including the questionable loyalties of the former rebels now in power and the competition between the Kremlin and the Chechen government for oil, are significant enough that the republic could slip into disorder again. History may show, Mendelson said, that Kadyrov was only a builder. ''Fundamentally, I don't know how we can talk about long-term stability with this kind of Rule of Man,'' she said. ''We don't have a picture of Ramzan as a representative of rule of law of stability. He is about construction.''

Malashenko, at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said he saw the Chechen president differently, saying that Kadyrov had become an essential national figure. But he added that he worried that Kadyrov's standing was connected to his personal relationship with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

If Putin leaves office next year at the end of his second term, as required by Russia's Constitution, he said, Kadyrov could be at risk. ''He is hated in Moscow by a lot of people,'' he said. ''Only Ramzan is able to be a national leader. If he disappears, there will be a quarrel between the clans.''

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Cyprus

US urges new UN envoy for Cyprus talks Agence France Presse, 9/27/07

Washington has urged the United Nations to send a new special envoy to Cyprus to focus on peace talks on the divided Mediterranean island, a high-ranking US diplomat said.

"The US wants to have a new beginning with the government of Cyprus," said Under Secretary of State for political affairs Nicholas Burns late Wednesday after meeting with Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos in New York where leaders from around the world have gathered for the UN General Assembly.

"On the question of the problem of Cyprus, which has gone on for so many decades, the US government has a very clear view: that the international community should not postpone the efforts to bring peace to Cyprus," Burns said.

"So we are recommending to the UN Secretary General that he makes a new attempt to appoint a negotiator to lead international negotiations for peace in Cyprus."

Burns said his talks with Papadopoulos, which took place on the sidelines of the General Assembly, were his first with the Greek Cypriot leader.

"I said the US would be very supportive of that and of course would be actively involved in that," Burns said.

Talks on resolving the Cyprus problem have largely stalled since 2004 when Greek Cypriots rejected a UN-drafted proposal to reunify the island, a plan that was backed by most Turkish Cypriot voters.

In May 2004, a divided Cyprus joined the European Union. The northern part of the island is governed by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway statelet recognized only by Ankara.

Cyprus has been divided along ethnic lines since 1974, when Turkey invaded its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup aiming to unite the island with Greece.

Papadopoulos is to hold talks with UN chief Ban Ki-moon in New York on Sunday, his spokesman said. His rival, Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat, is to hold talks with Ban on October 16 over the future of the island.

Cypriot president confident Syria will not recognize breakaway state despite ferry spat Alexandra Olson, Associated Press, 9/28/07

The Cypriot president said he was confident Syria had no intention of recognizing a breakaway state in his Mediterranean island despite a spat over a ferry that sailed to a Syrian port from the separatist region. "I don't believe we will need to take any action," Papadopoulos said Thursday. "I'm sure the Syrian government will make it absolutely clear that there is no question of recognizing" a Turkish Cypriot state.

Cyprus has been divided into a Greek Cypriot south and a Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkey invaded after a failed Athens-backed coup by supporters of union with Greece. Following the invasion, the Cyprus government declared all northern ports and airports closed.

But on Saturday, a ferry sailed from the port of Famagusta in Turkish Cypriot north to the Syrian port of Latakia, prompting Cyprus to demand an explanation from Syria. Turkey is the only country that recognizes the breakaway state.

Syria's foreign minister assured his Cypriot counterpart during a meeting at the United Nations this week that no government agreement was behind the ferry sailing, President Tassos Papadopoulos told The Associated Press in an interview. He said the ferry sailed under a deal with a private company.

Cyprus has not received an explicit promise that the ferry link would stop, but the Syrians have promised to look into the incident, said Papadopoulos, who was in New York for the U.N. General Assembly meeting.

Turkish Cypriot officials have said officials are negotiating with tour agencies for regular trips to start in October. Papadopoulos did not say what Cyprus would do if Syria decides to allow regular ferry service, saying he was confident the incident would be resolved. Syrian officials did not immediately return requests for comment.

Little progress has been made since Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders reached an agreement in July 2006 to start negotiations on reuniting their island, which is physically divided by a buffer zone patrolled by U.N. peacekeepers.

On Wednesday, Papadopoulos met with U.S. Undersecretary of States Nicolas Burns, who told reporters later that he had urged the United Nations to appoint a new envoy to get negotiations restarted.

The U.S. expressed disappointed in 2004 when Greek Cypriot voters rejected a U.N. plan for reunification that was approved by Turkish Cypriots. But Burns said he told Papadopoulos the U.S. "wants to have a new beginning with the government of Cyprus."

"We believe it's very important that our two governments ... have a good, close relationship. And I told the President on behalf of our government we would create that climate for a new relationship," Burns said.

Papadapoulos blamed Turkish Cypriot leaders for the stalled talks, saying they were determined to revive the U.N. plan, which Greek Cypriots argued would solidify the island's division through its constitutional provisions.

Turkey is the only country that recognizes the breakaway region. A dispute arose between Turkey and Cyprus when Cyprus started auctioning off oil exploration rights in a 27,000-square mile (69,930 square- kilometer) area off the coast of Cyprus. Turkey claims it also has legal rights and interest in the area.

In August, a U.S.-based company and international consortium submitted bids for three out of the 11 offshore blocks made available in the first licensing round.

Papadopoulos dismissed Turkey's concerns and said a second licensing round will proceed as planned in 2008. He insisted Turkey's objections would not deter companies from bidding, saying more have not applied because the reserves are unproven.

"It's all makeshift crisis," he said. "People should remember that even if there are reserves, the first barrel hopefully will come up in seven years."

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Democratic Republic of the Congo

DRC protests to Uganda after six die in border clash Agence France Presse, 9/26/07

Democratic Republic of Congo protested to Uganda Wednesday after six Congolese nationals were killed and five injured by Ugandan troops on Lake Albert, marking the border between the two countries.

"In the face of these serious acts resulting from irresponsible and unacceptable behavior by the Ugandan army, the (DRC foreign) ministry expresses the strongest protest of the government," a ministry statement delivered to the Ugandan embassy in Kinshasa said.

DR Congo "demands explanations from the Ugandan government" of the incident "which is not calculated to strengthen neither in the spirit or the letter" recent agreements concluded by the two neighbors.

The UN mission in DR Congo, MONUC, said Tuesday that there had been "two separate incidents" on Monday at Lake Albert, a region where oil was recently discovered.

"There was a firefight on Monday afternoon on Lake Albert in which six (Congolese) were killed and five were wounded," said MONUC's military spokesman Gabriel de Brosses.

De Brosses said the dead included a Congolese soldier, two other men, two women and a child.

According to witnesses speaking to the UN-backed Okapi radio, eight Ugandan soldiers on a motorised dinghy approached a civilian boat carrying around 40 passengers and opened fire after two Congolese soldiers aboard refused to give up their weapons.

A Ugandan army spokesman said earlier that two Congolese soldiers and one Ugandan soldier had died in a clash in Ugandan waters of the lake, involving a barge belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp.

But Heritage said its vessel was not involved.

Heritage said its vessel was "within Ugandan waters in Lake Albert in the process of lifting cables to mark the completion of a seismic survey" when a UN patrol boat detained the ship and its crew.

"This was a routine check, not hostile, and there was full cooperation. After a short interview at shore, the vessel and crew were released and returned to base in Uganda," a statement said.

The clash between border forces was a "separate, unrelated, isolated incident," it added. "No employees or sub-contractors of Heritage were involved."

The company challenged a UN official, who told AFP the oil exploration vessel was escorted out of "Congolese waters" to "avoid increasing tensions" between the two nations and "to ensure the crew's safety."

In a second episode, according to the UN, Uruguayan soldiers belonging to MONUC discovered the Heritage vessel on the DR Congo side of the lake and escorted it to a Congolese border town, according to Michel Bonnardeaux, MONUC spokesman for civilian affairs.

He said no violence occurred at that time.

The Ugandan army spoke earlier of one incident involving the Heritage vessel in which three soldiers, two Congolese and one Ugandan, had died.

Kicoco Tabaro, army spokesman for western Uganda, insisted that the vessel belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp had been on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert when it was seized and commandeered to the Congolese side.

Tension between the two Great Lakes nations has shot up since August 1 when Uganda accused DRC troops of killing a British engineer exploring for oil on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert.

Oil companies have been working in the region for many years, and last year Heritage and Australia's Hardman Resources said they had found large deposits there and would start extraction in 2009.

Uganda invaded DR Congo in 1998 during its neighbor’s civil war in 1998 on the ground it was tracking down Ugandan rebels. Some Ugandan troops were accused of wide rights abuses and of plundering gold and diamonds.

Kampala and Kinshasa signed an agreement in September in Tanzania to open "joint oil exploration and exploitation" in Lake Albert.

UN refugee agency warns on DRC violence Agence France Presse, 9/29/07

Fresh violence in eastern DR Congo threatens to force tens of thousands of people to flee their homes, overwhelming already overcrowded displacement camps, the UN refugee agency said Saturday.

Clashes in the Nord-Kivu region between the DR Congo army and rebels loyal to renegade Tutsi general Laurent Nkunda between August 27 and September 6 displaced more than 90,000 people who for the past three weeks have been receiving humanitarian aid.

A short-lived UN-imposed ceasefire was shattered on September 24 and 25 with fresh clashes in the Masisi district south of Sake, 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of the regional capital Goma, and around Kitchanga, 50 kilometers north of Goma.

More civilians have fled their homes as a result, with waves of new arrivals expected in camps in the coming days in the Muganga area where 65,000 people are already being sheltered, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.

"We are extremely concerned that an intensification of fighting ... will lead to tens of thousands of newly displaced flooding already overcrowded displacement sites. This would be in addition to the over 300,000 Congolese displaced in (Nord-Kivu) since December last year," it said.

UNHCR field teams have identified some 1,750 new arrivals since Tuesday in camp sites in Mugunga with those displaced saying they fled as fighting drew closer to their villages.

Many walked for two days to reach the Mugunga area, some 20 kilometers west of Goma. They report there are more displaced on the road fleeing towards Mugunga and Goma.

In Masisi district a UNHCR field team discovered another large group of displaced people in the village of Nzulo, some seven kilometers east of Sake, where the village chief says 5,000 displaced people have been sheltering since early September.

A recent inter-agency mission to the Kitchanga, Mweso and Kalemba villages in Masisi district, in which UNHCR took part, found signs that as many as 16,000 people are sheltering along the road connecting these villages.

Others are reportedly hiding in the forests or have fled to neighboring Sud-Kivu province. Next week, UNHCR registration experts on mission in Goma will start a verification exercise of the site and camp population in Mugunga area together with non-governmental organizations NRC and Solidarite.

DR Congo President Joseph Kabila returned to Kinshasa on Saturday following a trip to Belgium and to the United Nations in New York where he called for help in ending the violence in his country.

He also indicated he was favorable to a proposal from former colonial power Belgium for a UN facilitator to be sent to the region, Belgian diplomatic sources told AFP.

The breaking of the recent ceasefire followed a four-day visit to the region by Kabila during which he ruled out negotiations with Nkunda, accused by Congolese authorities of war crimes.

Violence in the region also involves the local Mai Mai militia and Hutu rebels from Rwanda who have been in the region since the 1994 Rwandan genocide of 800,000 mostly Tutsis.

Deadline extended for DRCongo disarmament programme Agence France Presse, 10/1/07

A UN disarmament programme in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been extended after only 1,600 of an expected 4,500 militiamen gave up their arms, officials said Monday.

The scheme, under the aegis of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), began in July and was scheduled to end on Sunday.

It encompasses three active armed groups in Ituri, a region in the north east of DR Congo. The programme -- called Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) -- was signed up to in 2006 by rebel chiefs in a pact with the government.

According to the UNDP's estimates, the three groups, the Patriotic Resistance Front of Ituri (PRFI), the Revolutionary Movement of Congo (RMC) and the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (NIF), had a total of 4,500 militia still to hand over their arms.

But due to a recent "large" influx of militia into transit camps, the deadline for disarmament has been extended, according to UNDP expert Gustavo Gonzales.

On Saturday more than 200 PRFI militia arrived at the disarmament site at the Ituri capital, Bunia, according to the UN-sponsored radio station Okapi.

Other militia, who had blamed their late compliance with the programme on a lack of information, were now on their way to the location.

"They will be given perhaps another two or three days... the disarmament points will remain open. But they must set off immediately to make up for lost time," emphasized Jonas Mfweti, head of the UNDP in Ituri.

After handing in their arms, the militiamen are identified and given tamper-proof ID documents. They then have a choice of rejoining civil society or entering the army. The Ituri region is rich in gold and has been the centre of violent confrontations with militia and inter- ethnic fighting since 1999, which had led to 60,000 deaths, according to humanitarian agencies.

Since 2005 the DDR programme has led to the disarmament of more than 20,000 militiamen, but the return of less than half the estimated 30,000 guns in circulation.

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Georgia

Georgia, South Ossetia blame each other for skirmish Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili, Associated Press, 9/27/07

The commander of Georgian peacekeeping forces near the breakaway province of South Ossetia called an overnight firefight "a deliberate attack" by separatist forces, but the commander of Russian peacekeepers said it was not clear who fired first.

Mamuka Kurashvili, the Georgian peacekeeping chief in the area, said the separatists fired automatic weapons and mortars late Wednesday at several villages populated by ethnic Georgians.

"That was a deliberate attack," Kurashvili told The Associated Press. "The Georgian side was forced to open retaliatory fire."

Georgian officials did not mention any casualties, but Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for separatist authorities in South Ossetia, said at least two people were wounded by the Georgian shelling in Tskinvali, the province's main city. She said the Georgian forces had fired first and that the province's military retaliated.

Marat Kulakhmetov, the commander of Russian peacekeepers in the area, said on Russian television that it was not immediately clear who had fired first.

South Ossetia is now dotted by ethnic Ossetian and ethnic Georgian villages like a chessboard. Settlements are closely guarded by separatist forces and Georgian police, and shooting breaks out sporadically.

Abkhazia, another separatist province, said Thursday it had sent reinforcements to the border with Georgia in response to skirmishes in South Ossetia. Sergei Bagapsh, Abkhazia's separatist president, said an additional 200 police were sent to a buffer zone along the Inguri river.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia defeated the Georgian government forces during separatist wars in the early 1990s and have been running their own affairs ever since, developing close ties with Moscow. Russian peacekeepers have been deployed to both breakaway provinces, but Georgia has accused them of favoring the separatists and attempts to negotiate political solutions have failed.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has repeatedly vowed to bring the two regions back under government control and has aggressively pushed his nation to seek membership in NATO and the European Union the policy that set him on a collision course with Moscow.

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, Saakashvili accused Russia of interference in Georgia's domestic politics and "reckless and dangerous" behavior. He claimed that Russia had tried to skew reports of an incident last week in the breakaway region of Abkhazia in which Georgian forces killed two Russian military officials.

Russia's ambassador to the U.N., Vitaly Churkin, told reporters that the men were instructors at an "anti- terrorist training center" and were killed Sept. 20 by knife wounds and gunshots to the head. Churkin said he had raised the matter in Security Council consultations earlier Wednesday.

Helped to power by protests, Georgia's leader now faces demonstrations Daria Vaisman, Associated Press, 9/30/07

The large protest that followed the former defense minister's arrest may signal the start of Georgia's most serious political crisis since the 2003 Rose Revolution brought pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili to power.

Some of the Georgians who had supported Saakashvili in demonstrations four years ago returned Friday to the steps of the parliament building this time to call for his resignation and new elections. And they have vowed to stage more protests.

It was a stunning turn of events in this former Soviet state, which has struggled for the past decade both with Russia and with its own rapid political and economic transformation.

Friday's protest was called after the arrest Thursday of Irakli Okruashvili, a hawkish former defense minister, on corruption charges. Days earlier, Okruashvili had alleged that Saakashvili once ordered the killing of a well-known businessman, and that the president also was involved in the mysterious 2005 death of Georgia's prime minister.

Saakashvili on Saturday called the charges "unpardonable lies."

Though his opponents have branded him as an authoritarian leader whose claims to be fighting corruption are hypocritical, observers were nonetheless caught off guard by the recent accusations, the arrest and the protests.

"The whole incident is a surprise a big one," said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary Matthew Bryza in a phone interview. "It's a very serious moment in the political life of Georgia the ramifications of which are unclear at this point."

"We're watching this really closely," he said.

Prosecutors have accused Okruashvili of corruption and misuse of power during his time in office, and he faces up to 24 years in prison if convicted.

The 34-year-old was once part of Saakashvili's airtight inner circle, but was sacked from his job as defense minister last year. He had called for the use of military force to regain control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian regions controlled by separatists since the 1990s.

In recent months there have been clashes between Georgian and separatist forces in both regions, which have support from Russia.

Okruashvili's accusations against Saakashvili, long the subject of rumor and speculation here, shocked many Georgians because they came from a former insider.

But his arrest seemed to tap a deep well of discontent, and transformed him at least temporarily into a political martyr.

"It's not the accusations against Saakashvili, but the arrest that threatens to lead to a broader political crisis," said Ana Jelenkovic, a Georgia analyst at Eurasia Group, a U.S.-based firm that provides consulting on geopolitical risks.

Saakashvili still appears to have broad popular support in Georgia, but there is discontent about his government's policies.

Georgia is in the midst of an economic boom. The sound of construction echoes through the capital, part of a nationwide reconstruction. Electricity shortages and routine demands for bribes from officials, once common, are relics of the past.

But the country's embrace of free-market policies has created difficulties as well. Prices have skyrocketed, and unemployment is endemic. The government has refused to offer subsidies to destitute farmers hit by a series of economic crises.

Some complain that Saakashvili's administration cannot tolerate criticism or scrutiny. They accuse the government of sidestepping the rule of law and creating an overwhelmingly powerful executive branch.

The result, critics say, has been reform without real democracy a system marked by violations of property rights, a muzzled media and political arrests.

Magda Frichova, Caucasus Project Director at the International Crisis Group think tank, said Friday's rally was evidence of the frustration many Georgians feel with the government's heavy-handed conduct.

"This protest was not necessarily about Okruashvili or support for him," she said. "Rather, it stressed the message that the public will not be content with a lack of transparency or any sense of arbitrariness."

Members of Okruashvili's party called his arrest a sign that the government feared a resurgent opposition, which up to now has been weak and divided. Okruashvili is generally considered the only credible rival to Saakashvili, whose National Party dominates the political landscape.

Georgia holds its next presidential election in late 2008.

"We knew that the government was afraid of losing power, but we didn't think they would move in so soon," said Keti Makharashvili, a lawmaker from Okruashvili's party. "This was a totally desperate move on their part," she said, sobbing still a day after Okruashvili's arrest.

Within hours of Okruashvili's televised speech on Tuesday, Makharashvili said a stream of people began arriving at the new party's headquarters to register their names on a membership list. She said the list was later confiscated by the police during a raid of Okruashvili's office and home.

As thousands of demonstrators chanted under parliament's Georgian and Council of Europe flags Friday, Okruashvili's wife, Irina Gordeladze, stood quietly on the sidelines in oversized sunglasses. A parade of friends and well-wishers offered their sympathy and support.

"With this move, the government has admitted that what was revealed by my husband was true," she told The Associated Press. "They were afraid of my husband's ratings, and they are ready to do anything not to lose power."

Viktor Dundua said he joined the protest not to support Okruashvili, but to demand that Saakashvili answer the allegations, to push for government accountability and to defend rights he feels have been trampled.

He said he would continue to protest "until Saakashvili answers the questions, or makes a date for a new election." Daria Vaisman is based in Tbilisi and has been covering the Caucasus region since 2005.

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Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast restarts identity card program in step toward elections Parfait Kouassi, Associated Press, 9/25/07

Ivory Coast began a giant and contentious task Tuesday trying to determine who among its millions of inhabitants lacking proper documents qualify for national IDs, a key step toward holding elections expected next year.

The national identity card program has been repeatedly delayed and derailed by political wrangling. Critics believe the opposition will take advantage of it to register migrants illegally to skew elections in their favor; the opposition says it only wants IDs for people who have been excluded from past votes.

Justice Minister Mamadou Kone said teams of judges would begin the national identity card process Tuesday in two symbolic spots: the home villages of President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader-turned Prime Minister Guillaume Soro.

The exercise is expected to take three months. Ivory Coast's independent electoral commission has said that it will take a minimum of 10 months after the end of the identification program to organize elections.

More than one-third of Ivory Coast's estimated 17 million people are migrants working on cocoa, coffee and cotton plantations, and the government says about 3.5 million people lack identity cards, often because they grew up in rural villages and never received birth certificates.

Under the program, judges will hold audiences in towns and villages countrywide to determine nationalities. Those determined to be citizens of neighboring states like Mali or Burkina Faso will be issued Ivorian ID cards saying so. Those who are determined to be Ivorian will be able to use the cards to apply for citizenship and the right to vote.

The issue has been a cause of instability in Ivory Coast for years. The once-stable nation suffered its first coup in 1999, and tension about the rights of immigrants and minority ethnic groups fueled a 2002 coup attempt that sparked civil war and left the world's leading cocoa producer split in half. A peace deal in March reunited the country and made a former rebel leader premier.

First launched in July 2006, the identification program was abandoned a few weeks later after protests by pro-Gbagbo groups turned violent. The groups had argued that the program would give voting rights to foreigners.

Gbagbo's five-year mandate officially expired in October 2005, but he has stayed in power since then, citing a constitutional clause that allows the head of state to extend his term in office if required by war or crisis.

ICoast leader urges lifting of UN sanctions Agence France Presse, 9/26/07

Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo on Wednesday called for UN sanctions on his country to be eased in his first speech before the UN General Assembly since coming to power in 2000. "I solemnly call for the partial lifting of the arms embargo to allow the Ivory Coast to carry out its mission to protect people and property," he said.

"Ivorians are also concerned at individual sanctions imposed on some of our countrymen," he added, naming three of politicians and militant supporters, who were deemed by the UN to be obstacles to peace in the west African nation.

Ivory Coast's protracted political crisis received a boost in March when Gbagbo and his former foe, ex- rebel leader Guillaume Soro, signed a new peace deal brokered by neighboring Burkina Faso.

The deal, approved by the United Nations, called for long delayed presidential elections to be held with 10 months in the world's top cocoa producer.

The country's electoral commission announced earlier this month the elections could be held by October next year, slightly later than set out in the peace deal, provided a voter listing exercise opens this month as planned.

Gbagbo agreed elections were needed and said they should be quickly organized but did not give a date in his speech.

The Ouagadougou deal also set out the lifting of the sanctions imposed in 2006 against the leader of the Ivory Coast's pro-government hardline militias, Charles Ble Goude, and two other politicians, Eugene Djue and Kouakou Fofie.

The UN had slapped a 12-month travel ban and asset freeze on Ble Goude and the other two Ivory Coast politicians.

The UN arms embargo was imposed on the Ivory Coast in November 2004, and its respect is being monitored by some 8,000 UN soldiers backed by between 3,000 and 3,500 French troops.

Ivory Coast opposition leader tells supporters to seek change through elections Parfait Kouassi, Associated Press, 9/27/07

A major opposition leader in Ivory Coast called on his supporters to resist the ruling party's "forces of oppression," Thursday, but to forswear violence and seek change through the ballot box.

Alassane Ouattara who plans to run for president of the battered West African nation in upcoming elections told the crowd of thousands chanting his name that their priority should be to get on the voting rolls as the balloting approaches.

The election, for which a date has yet to be set, is the key event for restoring Ivory Coast to the ranks of functioning democracies. The country was split in two after an attempted coup sparked civil war in 2002. It has struggled unsuccessfully to reunite through more than three years of peace deals and disarmament plans.

The vote has been scheduled and delayed a number times. But many Ivorians say the latest peace deal signed earlier this year between President Laurent Gbagbo and the main rebel leader shows the first real commitment by both sides to re-establishing a single government.

Ouattara promised his supporters that he would be a "modern president" who would work to bring prosperity back to the people of the world's largest cocoa producer.

"I will give you work and I will put Ivory Coast to work," Ouattara said. A former prime minister of Ivory Coast, Ouattara was banned from running from president in the last elections in 2000 because of accusations that his parents had been born outside the country. He was later accused of having had a hand in the 2002 coup attempt and he fled the country.

Ouattara said he chose to hold his rally in the neighborhood of Abobo to pay homage to more than 1,000 of his supporters who were targeted and killed in the ensuing violence.

He told the members of his Rally for Republicans party to "avoid all ideas of vengeance" and focus on getting the identity cards that will allow them to vote. The government launched the program of identifying Ivorians for the voting rolls earlier this week.

Ouattara's rally came after a similar event was held by former President Henri Konan Bedie, deposed in a 1999 military coup, who also plans to run for president against Gbagbo.

The government has announced that elections will be no earlier than October 2008. Gbagbo had called for elections to be held in December, but the nation's electoral commission recently said that it would be unrealistic to expect elections to take place before October of next year, since millions of Ivorians, many of whom have no form of identification, will need to be registered to vote.

The peace deal signed in March called for rebel chief Guillaume Soro to become prime minister as part of the power-sharing deal and for elections to be held within 10 months. The delay until 2008 is at least the third time elections have been postponed.

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Kashmir

Police: 2 Islamic rebels killed in mosque siege in Indian Kashmir Aijaz Hussain, Associated Press, 9/30/07

Soldiers stormed a mosque in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, killing two suspected rebels who were hiding inside during a 20-hour siege, officials said Sunday.

The alleged militants were killed after they opened fire on troops who had chased them inside a mosque in Tujan village, 45 kilometers (28 miles) northwest of Srinagar, the biggest city in Jammu-Kashmir state, said senior police official Ashiq Bukhari. The soldiers fired smoke shells inside and shattered windows with their gunfire, but police officials said the mosque was not seriously damaged.

Indian soldiers and police officers launched a search operation Saturday in Tujan village after receiving tips that militants were in the village, said Bukhari. Suspected rebels shot at the soldiers, who had cordoned off the village, and then found refuge inside the mosque, Bukhari said.

Police identified the slain guerrillas as Khursheed Ahmed Rather and Nazir Ahmed Dar of the Hezb-ul- Mujahedeen militant group. Rather was the most-wanted local commander of the group, Bukhari said.

When the siege ended Sunday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the mosque chanting, "We want freedom" and "Down with collaborators."

There was no immediate word from Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen, one a dozen guerrilla groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

The rebels have been fighting since 1989 to win Kashmir's independence or see India's two-thirds of the predominantly Muslim Himalayan region merged with Pakistan's territory. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have died since the start of the rebellion.

India to look at stopping 'terror' investors Pratap Chakravarty, Agence France Presse, 10/1/07

Indian security chiefs will this week discuss how to stop extremist groups playing the country's fast-rising stock market to fund terrorist attacks, an official said on Monday.

India's spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing or RAW, last month warned the nation's markets watchdog that individuals or groups linked to the al-Qaeda terror network might be putting money into India's bull market.

Heads of federal intelligence agencies, state police chiefs and special agents from government units will attend a three-day brain-storming session starting Wednesday in New Delhi, a senior home ministry official said.

"The agenda will include inputs we've received that stock markets could be an arena where finances are raised or could be raised to fund acts of terrorism on our soil or elsewhere," the official told AFP, asking not to be named.

A bull run in the Indian markets has led to an unprecedented fund inflow of 11.63 billion dollars so far this year, way above the 4.86 billion dollars notched up during the same period a year earlier.

India's benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index or Sensex has been hitting a series of record highs.

"We have an ongoing process to scan dubious investments but we would like to further pool our resources to fight this new menace," the official, engaged in anti-terrorism operations, said.

In August, 42 people were killed in a string of blasts in Hyderabad, three months after 11 people died in a bomb attack at a mosque in the southern Indian city.

On July 11, 2006, a series of blasts planted on rush-hour trains killed 186 commuters and injured nearly 800 in India's financial hub Mumbai.

"Someone is or are funding them. And what we want to know is how," the home ministry official added.

New Delhi has also put under the scanner global remittances to India to try and stamp out money laundering by outlawed extremist organizations.

The country's central Reserve Bank of India and the finance ministry would begin the process of verifying the operations by hundreds of thousands of "sub-agents" of international remittance firms, he said.

"In recent months, the government has stepped up its vigil on terror financing with the (government's) financial intelligence unit coming across 800 suspicious transactions" involving global remittance companies, the Times of India said on Monday.

India permits only inbound remittances through these money wire transfer services with a cap of 2,500 US dollars on each individual transfer.

India has been locked in a bloody battle with Islamic militants in disputed Kashmir since 1989 and faces regular attacks on its security personnel in the revolt-racked northeastern states.

Return to Table of Contents Kosovo

Serbia's prime minister pledges Kosovo will never be independent Dusan Stojanovic, Associated Press, 9/26/07

Serbia's prime minister pledged Wednesday that Kosovo will never be independent and warned the U.S. against recognizing the separatist province as he headed for direct talks with rival ethnic Albanians in New York.

"Belgrade's message will be that Kosovo will never be independent, that its unilateral recognition would represent a political crime," state Tanjug news agency quoted Vojislav Kostunica as saying.

The first direct meeting between Serbian leaders, who are seeking at least formal control over Kosovo, and its ethnic Albanian officials, who are demanding independence, is set for Friday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

Although Kosovo where ethnic Albanians represent 90 percent of its 2 million people remains formally part of Serbia, it has been run by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended a Serbian military crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists in the southern province.

With a lingering threat of renewed unrest in the Balkans, Kosovo Albanian officials have vowed to declare independence if a final push for a diplomatic settlement does not result in Kosovo's statehood by Dec. 10. U.S. officials have indicated they would recognize such a declaration.

"All U.N. member states, including the United States, have an international obligation to respect Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Kostunica said, adding that any unilateral recognition of Kosovo would be considered "null and void" by Serbia.

Kosovo Albanian Prime Minister Agim Ceku said in Kosovo's capital Pristina that progress in the deadlocked internationally-supervised talks "depends on Serbia's attitude."

"We hope Serbia will look to the future, and not to the past," Ceku told The Associated Press, hours before traveling to New York for the first head-to-head talks with the Serbs, which are not expected to bring a breakthrough in solving the last remaining territorial dispute stemming from the violent breakup of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Associated Press reporter Nebi Qena contributed to this report from Kosovo.

No breakthrough in Kosovo meeting, more talks in October Indalecio Alvarez, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07

Serbia and Kosovo's Albanian leaders on Friday failed to narrow their differences in crunch talks here on the breakaway Serbian province's future status but agreed to meet again in Brussels next month.

"We will have our next meeting with both parties in Brussels on October 14," said German mediator Wolfgang Ischinger, a member of the troika composed of the European Union, Russia and the United States mediating the talks.

The troika has until December 10 to complete their last-ditch effort to find a compromise acceptable to both sides, with the separatist Kosovo leaders threatening to declare independence unilaterally.

Serbs and ethnic Albanian separatist leaders stuck to their respective positions in Friday's direct talks at the EU liaison office here, but agreed on the way forward in a document entitled "the New York declaration."

After the meeting, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica expressed disappointment. "I must say that I am a bit disappointed because this is the second round of talks that has happened in two years," he told a press conference.

"I'm afraid the other (side) is encouraged by some countries, mostly the United States, not to negotiate, feeling quite secure because it can be granted its independence."

Kostunica blamed the United States for the stalemate, accusing Washington of pushing for months for Kosovo independence, even if it means recognizing a unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's majority Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of the territory's population.

Kosovo, which legally remains a province of Serbia, has been run by a UN mission since NATO forced Belgrade-backed troops to withdraw in 1999, ending a brutal crackdown against ethnic Albanians separatists.

In a joint statement Thursday, members of the six-nation contact group on Kosovo -- Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States -- said they endorsed UN chief Ban Ki-moon's assessment that "the status quo is not sustainable."

"It has damaging consequences for Kosovo's political, social and economic development and for the underlying stability of the region. A solution therefore has to be found without delay," the statement said.

The two sides "need to engage with the troika (of mediators) with a constructive spirit," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

In Thursday's talks, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated US backing for the three mediators, State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez said.

"She stressed that the troika process is not open-ended," and will end on December 10, he said.

The direct talks, part of a process that began in August after the Security Council failed to agree on UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's blueprint for Kosovo's supervised independence, are a last-ditch attempt to bridge the differences between the parties.

Troika members -- Ischinger, US diplomat Frank Wisner and Russian envoy Alexander Botsan- Kharchenko -- are to report to Ban on the outcome of the negotiating process by December 10.

"We prefer a solution through the Security Council but we are also prepared to offer and make the final solution by ourselves. This process can lead us to making a unilateral declaration of independence," Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said before flying to New York for the talks.

The issue has split the European Union, while the US openly backs independence and Serbian ally Russia insists it will not support any unilateral solution that might send a bad signal to separatists elsewhere around the world.

The settlement of the Kosovo problem is only possible within the framework of international law based on negotiations," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the General Assembly Friday. "Unilateral steps will not lead to lasting peace and will create the risk of destabilization in the Balkans and other regions."

That argument has resonance in Spain -- facing problems with Basque separatists -- while Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia are known to be reluctant to recognize any unilateral move or an imposed UN solution. Kosovo, region risk turmoil if solution is delayed, U.N. chief warns in report Nebi Qena, Associated Press, 10/2/07

Delays in resolving Kosovo's status could undermine the work of the U.N. in the province and risk throwing the region back into instability, the U.N. secretary general said in a report Monday.

Ban Ki-moon said simmering tensions between the independence-minded ethnic Albanians and Serbs, who want to keep the province within Serbia, could boil over if no deal was reached soon, according to an advance copy of the report made available to The Associated Press.

"There remains a discernible underlying volatility in Kosovo, which has been accentuated by disappointment expressed by the people of Kosovo at the prolongation of the Kosovo future status process," Ban said. The report is to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council next week.

The process must reach a conclusion, he said, or else parties will face the risk of "progress beginning to unravel and of instability in Kosovo and the region."

International envoys said on Friday that both sides, which met in New York, appeared determined to bring the peace process to a successful end.

It was the first meeting between the rival sides since Serbia earlier this year rejected a U.N. plan to grant Kosovo supervised independence. Another round of face-to-face discussions is scheduled for Oct. 14 in Brussels.

Ban said in the report that unresolved differences between Serbia and ethnic Albanians could again lead to failure in the talks.

"Consideration should be given as to how to deal with a situation in which the sides are unable to reach an agreement by the end of the current period of engagement," he said.

International envoys are to report to Ban on the progress of the talks by Dec. 10.

The U.S. supports Kosovo becoming an independent state, but Russia opposes the drive, with some EU countries worrying over whether to recognize an independent Kosovo if talks fail.

Some 10,000 people died during the 1998-99 war, and some 2,000 remain missing in the aftermath of a brutal crackdown by Serb forces on separatist Albanians.

The onslaught prompted NATO to wage an 78-day air war against the former Yugoslavia to try to end the fighting.

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Macedonia

Greece wants Macedonia name issue resolved Elena Becatoros, Associated Press, 9/27/07

Greece wants to resolve a dispute with Macedonia that could threaten the Balkan country's prospects of joining NATO and the EU, a Greek diplomatic official said Thursday. Greece and Macedonia have been at odds for more than 15 years over the name of the former Yugoslav republic, which gained independence in 1991.

"Our position is clear. We want a mutually acceptable solution," the official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the problem, adding that such a solution would entail both sides meeting half way.

Athens has implied it could use its veto to prevent Macedonia from joining NATO and the European Union unless the issue is resolved. The dispute flared at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, when assembly president Srgjan Kerim used the name Macedonia when introducing that nation's president, Branko Crvenkovski.

Greece's mission to the U.N. denounced what it called Kerim's "unacceptable action," and said it "reaffirms the provocative and uncompromising position of the government of Skopje," referring to the country's capital.

Athens maintains that the name Macedonia belongs to a Greek province and that its use by its northern neighbor implies a territorial claim on Greece. Macedonia gained independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, but U.N.-backed negotiations on the name issue have remained deadlocked. The country is known officially in international bodies including the United Nations, the European Union and NATO as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM.

Greece hopes the issue can be resolved before the NATO summit next year, where Macedonia expects to be asked to join the alliance, the official said.

During a pre-election speech earlier this month, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis warned Skopje that Athens would prevent it from joining NATO and the EU unless the issue was resolved.

"We call on them to sit seriously at the negotiating table, and we call on them to immediately stop these policies that poison and undermine" relations, Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis told The Associated Press in an interview last week.

Despite the name issue, the two countries enjoy good economic ties, with Greece being a major investor in Macedonia.

The United States and many other countries have recognized the country as Macedonia. Last week, Canada became the latest nation to officially discard the FYROM acronym.

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Morocco

Morocco; Western Sahara Dispute at Turning Point, Says Minister U.N. News Service, 10/1/07

The issue of Western Sahara is witnessing an "historical turning point," the Foreign Minister of Morocco said today, referring to the Non-Self-Governing Territory as "Moroccan Sahara" and advocating a settlement based on an autonomy proposal put forward by the country's Government.

Addressing the General Assembly's annual high-level debate, Mohamed Benaïssa said the turning point "results from the dynamic created by the Moroccan Initiative on a Statute of Autonomy," which he said "has opened promising perspectives for overcoming the stalemate this issue faces at the UN level." He said the initiative "offers the fundamental elements necessary for a realistic, applicable and final political solution to a regional dispute that hinders the construction of a strong and homogenous Maghreb, interacting with its geopolitical environment."

It also "answers the call of the Security Council since 2004 about the need for finding a political solution to this dispute" and "is in conformity with international law."

He said Morocco has taken part in negotiations in "good faith with a constructive attitude."

Morocco is committed "to advance this process in order to reach a final solution to this dispute within the framework of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as on the basis of the Autonomy Initiative as the ultimate objective of the negotiation process and as an open, flexible and indivisible offer."

Earlier today, Algeria's Foreign Minister told the General Assembly that his country hopes for an agreement between Morocco and the Polisario Front that would pave the way for the people of Western Sahara to decide on their future.

Mourad Medelci said Western Sahara is the "last case of decolonization in Africa where the people are still deprived of their right to self-determination enshrined in relevant resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council."

He said the international community had nourished hopes for a just and lasting solution, notably through the Security Council's support in 2003 for the peace plan put forward by James Baker, the former Personal Envoy of the Secretary-General.

Algeria welcomed recent developments on the issue, including the adoption of Security Council resolution 1754, which underlined the need to achieve a just and comprehensive solution, Mr. Medelci said, voicing hope that negotiations could lead to an agreement that would allow the people of Western Sahara to pronounce themselves, freely and without constraints, through a self-determination referendum.

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Nepal

Maoists say Nepal army planning coup to save monarchy Deepesh Shrestha, Agence France Presse, 9/26/07

Nepal's Maoists have accused the country's armed forces of plotting a coup aimed at preventing the abolition of the embattled Himalayan monarchy.

In an interview with AFP, the second-in-command of the former rebels -- who want to see the monarchy dissolved -- said an attempted army takeover could happen soon unless the country is immediately declared a republic.

"There is a definite chance of a coup. We have reliable information. A section of the army -- we won't say all the army, but a selection of top generals loyal to the monarchy -- seem to be plotting," said Maoist number two Baburam Bhattarai.

"If we don't act boldly in time, they will take action," said Bhattarai, who was guarded at all times by stony-faced armed men.

He was justifying Maoist demands that Nepal be declared a republic now -- and not after a democratic vote on the matter as agreed to in last November's peace accord between the ex-rebels and mainstream parties.

Bhattarai said their partners in the peace accord were "dragging their feet" on implementing key reforms aimed at keeping King Gyanendra and the army out of politics, giving the "regressive feudal forces" time to regroup.

Under the November 2006 deal, the Maoists agreed to formally end their decade-long "People's War" -- a conflict that claimed at least 13,000 lives -- and confine their weapons and fighters to UN-supervised camps.

The Nepal Army, a bastion of the elite and pro-royals, have also been confined to barracks. But last week, the Maoists walked out of an interim coalition government and vowed to launch street protests to disrupt elections scheduled for November 22 that will decide if Gyanendra and his heirs have a future.

The ultra-leftists have come in for stiff international criticism for endangering the peace process here, with some analysts saying they are merely afraid of losing a popular vote.

But Bhattarai said "the experience of revolutionary change elsewhere is that unless you restructure and democratize the army, there is a chance of a coup and the old set-up returning."

"We realised that if you don't put pressure, if you don't go to the people and mobilise the masses, it will be difficult to complete this democratic revolution. That why we left the government."

The Maoist number two, an ideologue prone to drifting into lengthy discourses on Marxist-Leninist- Maoist semantics, asserted that his party was nevertheless "sticking by the ceasefire and peace accord."

"We are not going back to war," said the 53-year-old, who was speaking at a dark, dank hotel used as the movement's Kathmandu headquarters.

"We want change peacefully but we want change. We want to get rid of feudalism, monarchy and absolutism."

Bhattarai, who began his life as a left-wing rebel in 1977 after studying architecture in neighboring India, said a possible solution to the impasse was an emergency parliamentary session and vote to abolish the monarchy.

"It has to be abolished -- the sooner the better. We are discussing with different parties to fix the date, to convene parliament in the next few weeks and we are optimistic," he said.

As for the fate of the deeply unpopular Gyanendra, who took the throne after the former king and most of his relatives were massacred by a drugged, drunk and lovelorn crown prince in 2001, Bhattarai offered some reassuring words.

"We don't want to chop off his head," he said sternly. "We are not saying he should get out or he should be killed. He should just live like you and me."

Nepal delays dates for filing election nominations while reconciliation talks go on Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 10/1/07

Nepal's election commission has agreed to delay the deadlines for candidates and political parties to file nominations for November polls to elect an assembly to rewrite the constitution, an official said Monday.

The move follows a request from the government for a deadline extension while reconciliation talks continue this week between it and former communist rebels.

There has also been uncertainty about the election since the ex-rebels, known as Maoists, pulled out of the government last month and announced plans to disrupt the polls.

Leaders of the ruling parties and the Maoists met last week for two days but were unable to reach any agreement. The former rebels have said if no agreement is reached this week they will go ahead will planned anti-government protests.

Political parties will now file their lists of candidates on Oct. 5 and individual candidates will be able to register on Oct. 8, Chief Commissioner Bhojraj Pokhrel said. Previously the dates had been Sept. 30 and Oct. 5.

Pokhrel said the commission set new dates following a request from the government. Elections for a special Constituent Assembly have been set for Nov. 22. This assembly is meant to rewrite the constitution and decide what political system the country will follow in the future.

Pokhrel said the commission will not be able to make any more changes if the election is to go ahead on Nov. 22.

Nepal was plunged into a political crisis when the Maoists withdrew from the government demanding immediate abolition of the monarchy.

Other parties have said they also support a republic, but only after consideration by the special assembly.

The Maoists, who fought a decade-long armed insurgency to abolish the centuries-old monarchy, joined the government earlier this year after signing a peace agreement last year. More than 13,000 people were killed in the fighting.

Nepal's largest newspaper office attacked by ex-communist rebels' union Binaj Gurubacharya, Associated Press, 10/1/07

A trade union affiliated with former communist rebels attacked Nepal's largest newspaper office, destroying property and grounding publication to a halt, officials said Monday.

The Kantipur Publication, which publishes the privately run Nepali-language newspaper Kantipur and English edition The Kathmandu Post, was attacked by supporters of the All Nepal Printing and Publication Workers' Union, a wing of the former communist rebels.

The managing director of the publication, Kailash Sirohiya, said union activists tried to attack him, vandalized his vehicle and locked the newspaper office on Sunday. The activists also vandalized the printing press at night, forcing the company to stop publication of the newspapers.

Sirohiya said it would take a week for repairs before they can begin operation.

"This is a planned attack on the free press in the name of union demands," Sirohiya said. The union had been protesting, demanding their members be given permanent jobs at the publications, better positions and pay raises.

Police official Gorakh Bhandari confirmed the attack and said two of the attackers were arrested.

The Federation of Nepalese Journalists has condemned the attack.

"This is continuation to attacks on the free media by the Maoists despite assurances by their leaders in the past," said Bishnu Nisthuri of the federation. Comment from the union was not immediately available Monday.

The newspapers are known to be critical of the continued violence and abuses allegedly perpetrated by the former rebels.

Kantipur Publication is part of the largest news group in Nepal, which also has a television station, a radio station, several magazines and an online news portal.

The ex-rebels, known as Maoists, joined a peace process last year and abandoned their armed revolt, which began in 1996 and resulted in the deaths of 13,000 people.

They have been accused of continuing violence, however, including attacks on media outlets, businesses and government offices.

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Philippines

Update: Philippine army clashes with alleged militants, leaving at least 15 dead Xinhua General News Service, 10/2/07

At least eleven members of the rebel group Abu Sayyaf and four government soldiers were killed in two separate clashes in the southern Philippine provinces of Basilan and Sulu on Tuesday, military officials said.

The first crossfire occurred at Lanjil island in Basilan in an early morning fight, leaving four members of a platoon of the Navy 's Special Operations Group and 10 Abu Sayyaf men dead, while two navy soldiers were wounded, said Western Mindanao Command spokesman Maj. Eugene Batara.

Batara said Navy personnel were dispatched to the island after receiving reports about the presence of armed men. Shortly after landing at the island, the fighting broke out.

The armed group, Batara said, was led by Abduraja Sadikal and his brother Faisal Sadikal. Abduraja, a follower of Abu Sayyaf's former leader Anwar Abubakar, was killed in Tuesday's encounter. Abubakar was slain by government forces in Zamboanga Sibugay province several years ago, according to the military information.

Despite the triumph Batara said not a single body from the rebel side was collected by the army after the Tuesday clash.

"It has been an observation that these lawless elements do not leave their dead and wounded comrades," he said.

The four government fatalities were taken to the headquarters of the Naval Forces Western Mindanao in the Zamboanga City, while the wounded soldiers are being treated at the Camp Navarro Hospital also in the city, according to Lt. Col. Ariel Caculitan, the navy spokesman.

On the same day, another member of the Abu Sayyaf was killed in a firefight in a remote village in Talipao town in Sulu Province at around 7:45 a.m., said Armed Forces public information office chief Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro. One soldier was injured at the clash. Bacarro said the army conducted combat operations when they caught up with at least 50 Abu Sayyaf "bandits and lawless elements", ensuing a 20-minute fire fight.

Basilan an Sulu are known bailiwick of the Abu Sayyaf, a 350- member-strong anti-government rebel group tagged as "terrorist organization" by both the Philippine and the U.S. governments. Abu Sayyaf is blamed for initiating a string of atrocities and violent attacks to public venues in recent years. The military has renewed the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and Sulu following the Juy 10 ambush in Al Barkah town in Basilan that left 14 Marine soldiers dead, 10 of them were beheaded and mutilated.

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Somalia

Somali government teeters as chaos grows; Longing for days of warlords past Jeffrey Gettleman, The New York Times, 9/28/07

The instant the sack of grain fell off the truck and thumped down on the ground, it was consumed in a whirl of dust, fists and knees.

The hungry people, who had been baking for hours in the skin-crisping heat at an emergency distribution center Wednesday, were in no mood to negotiate. One man whipped out a machete, another a dagger, a third a handgun, which he waved menacingly in the air.

''My food! My food! My food!'' they all yelled, tussling over the sack.

Another sunny day in Somalia, another day in chaos.

It has been nine months since this country went through its biggest change in 16 years, but actually very little has changed. Hundreds of thousands of people are still on the verge of starvation, pirates still roam the seas, teenage gunmen are still on the streets and the idea of a functioning government is still a vapor.

The Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, a United Nations creation that was always seen as a shaky, short-term compromise at best, was installed in Mogadishu, the capital, in December, but it, like many Somalis, is now teetering.

A raging insurgency has confined the government to a handful of heavily fortified buildings in Mogadishu, while the rest of the country suffers.

Jowhar, a town of donkey carts and dust storms about 80 kilometers, or 50 miles, north of the capital, has been hit recently by drought, then floods and a massive influx of needy people. The intensifying street fighting in Mogadishu has driven thousands from their homes, and many showed up here, just when the local crops failed.

''There is nothing to eat,'' said Binti Olo Ahmad, a 40-year-old woman who trudged out of Mogadishu two weeks ago with eight children and now lives in a tent made from twigs and garbage bags. She laughed a short, throaty laugh when asked whether the anarchic days of the 1990s, when warring clans tore Somalia apart after the central government collapsed, were any worse.

''No way,'' she said. ''I've never seen war like this.'' UN officials are increasingly concerned. All the signs of a famine are on the horizon: food prices have nearly doubled in some areas; the cereal harvest is the worst in 13 years; malnutrition rates are rising sharply; and the weather forecast indicates that the rains this fall will be disappointing.

''Thousands of people are marching right up to the edge of a crisis,'' said Peter Goossens, director of the UN World Food Program in Somalia. ''Any additional little thing, any little flood or drought, will push them over.''

''It's sad,'' he said. ''This poor country keeps taking one blow after another. Ultimately, it will break.''

Many Somalis feel that has already happened. After a multimillion-dollar clan-reconciliation conference ended last month, some clan elders later traveled to Saudi Arabia to sign a ceremonial agreement. But Somalia's myriad clans are hardly at peace, and even the transitional government is showing worrying cracks.

This week, Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi and President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed got into a standoff over whether some of Gedi's allies should face corruption charges. The two leaders hail from rival clans, and some Somalis fear that unless the dispute is quickly resolved, it could spell an end to the thin veneer of cooperation between the two men and possibly turn into a clan war.

Government officials in Jowhar admit there are huge challenges. Ministries are not functioning, the transitional government is running out of money and all the recent turmoil has created overwhelming needs, said Deputy Governor Hussein Hassan Mahamoud. ''But we are trying,'' he said. ''We just need time.''

The question is, how much time do they have? The withering insurgent attacks seem only to be increasing. Last week, more than a dozen government soldiers were killed in a single raid. The hit-and- run attacks started when Ethiopian troops invaded in December to oust an Islamist movement that had briefly ruled much of Somalia and to shore up the transitional government, which has never enjoyed a lot of support.

The result today is that the Islamists have regrouped in thickly forested areas of southern Somalia, where they operate with virtual impunity. Mogadishu, meanwhile, has become a Baghdad-like mess of suicide bombs, roadside bombs and political assassinations.

The insurgents, who are a mix of clan and Islamist militias, held their own reconciliation conference this month in Asmara, Eritrea. They formed the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, a movement dedicated to overthrowing the transitional government.

Not all the country is up in flames, though. Jowhar is relatively stable. Girls flock to school in bright yellow veils. Battered old taxis glide down the streets. Tensions, like the ruckus over the sack of grain that fell off the food aid truck, are typically solved the Somali way.

As soon as the man yanked out his pistol, three heavily armed militiamen in wraparound sunglasses surrounded him. Facing superior firepower, the pistol-wielder smiled, shook his head and tucked his gun back into his waistband.

The sacks were then lugged back onto the truck, which sputtered on, like most of this country.

Troops forcing residents from homes in Somali capital, rights group says Salad Duhul, Associated Press, 9/30/07

Somali and Ethiopian troops have ordered thousands to vacate their homes in Somalia's capital to allow them to conduct searches for arms and insurgents, a local human rights group said. The order was issued after an insurgent attack last week against a government base, Elman Human Rights chairman Sudan Ali Ahmed said Saturday.

Meanwhile, witnesses and police said insurgents attacked a police station late Friday in southern Mogadishu, and that two soldiers and three civilians were killed a reminder of Mogadishu's near daily violence.

"The police station was briefly taken by the attackers, after forcing government soldiers to flee," witness Hassan Odawa said. "They also set free all the prisoners in jail," and burnt the station and a government house.

Cpl. Mohamed Iidle said the insurgents attacked his station, and that police killed several of them, but did not give any other details.

Madahey Barkhad said police had killed his two brothers without reason during the attack. "My brothers were deliberately killed by Somali police as they were in front of their home. I don't know why they kill innocents like my brothers," said Barkhad, screaming.

Government officials declined to comment on the reported evictions from Mogadishu. The rights group official said the order to vacate was issued Thursday, and that most people affected had either left Mogadishu or sought refuge with relatives or friends elsewhere in the city.

"I cannot give you precise numbers of displaced people, but I believe they are in the thousands, and they were forced by Ethiopian and Somali troops to vacate their homes," Ahmed told The Associated Press, basing the figures on interviews conducted with residents.

Asha Ali Jimuale, a mother of seven from a northern Mogadishu district, told the AP that soldiers had ordered her to leave her home, and warned that insurgents could use those who stayed behind as human shields.

The evictions this week were the first reported since April, when hundreds died in heavy fighting in Mogadishu, Ahmed said.

He said that when insurgents attack government positions, "the Ethiopians and government troops launch security operations, and the Islamists go to residential areas to use civilians as a shield."

Ahmed condemned both sides, saying: "They do not care about the lives of the civilians." On Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said its staff reported that Mogadishu was divided in two the deserted north, and a calm south.

"The streets of northern Mogadishu are so empty during the day ... literally only a handful of people can be seen," the U.N. refugee agency said in a statement. The capital's main market, Bakara, was barely functioning due to "fighting, assassinations and killings linked to robbery," it said.

It also said inflation was running high, with prices for staple items tripling over the past two months and counterfeit money available everywhere.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence and anarchy since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on each other. The current government, formed in 2004, has struggled to assert control.

A radical Islamic group ruled the capital and much of southern Somalia for six months last year, but was kicked out by Ethiopian troops who support the government. Since then, insurgents and government- allied troops have battled nearly every day, and thousands of civilians have been killed this year alone in Mogadishu.

Associated Press writer Mohamed Sheikh Nor in Mogadishu, Somalia, contributed to this report.

At least 10 killed as Somaliland, Puntland fight over town Mustafa Haji Abdinur, Agence France Presse, 10/1/07

At least 10 people were killed Monday in heavy fighting between forces from the breakaway states of Somaliland and Puntland over a disputed town on their border, military sources said.

The fighting, which lasted for more than hour and involved exchanges of heavy artillery fire, took place in and around Las Ano, a town near the Ethiopian border claimed by both Puntland and Somaliland.

A Puntland military commander on the frontline said Somaliland forces had started the hostilities.

"They have attacked our bases today, using heavy weapons and we are still in defensive positions in the Las Anod area," Ahmed Bile told AFP by phone.

"I can't tell you the exact number of people killed in fighting today but I'm sure that more than 10 people were killed," he added.

Speaking from Hargeysa, which has been designated the capital of the self-declared republic of Somaliland, a military commander from the opposing side said his forces had taken control of the town.

"Our forces are winning this war, we have the upper hand. Puntland forces have been provoking Somaliland for a long time but this time they lost. Our forces are now controlling Las Ano," Abdi Jamal told AFP.

"We are getting information that they are reinforcing but we are ready to defeat them," he added.

A local tribal elder said at least nine people were killed in the fighting and several others wounded.

"So far we have seen nine dead bodies inside the town. They are from both sides," said Hashi Omar Diriye, an elder from Las Ano whose clan is not involved in the fighting.

"We have also been told that three other bodies are lying on the outskirts of the town. Several other injured people were brought in," he added.

A relative calm had returned to the disputed town by the end of the afternoon but sporadic artillery fire could still be heard, according to witnesses.

"Now one side is inside the town and the other is outside. They are regrouping and we fear the fighting might continue," he told AFP.

The elder added that he and other elders in Las Ano had set up a committee to protect civilians inside the town.

In a statement, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on Somaliland to release reporter Ahmed Aadan Dhere, a correspondent of privately-owned Haatuf newspaper, who was arrested four days ago in Berbera township.

"The Somaliland authorities have a tendency to arrest journalists whenever they think it is in their interest, but if media issues are involved, this constitutes a serious violation of democratic standards," RSF said in a statement. "In this particular case, Dhere is the victim of a conflict between a local politician and the central government. He obviously must be freed at once," the statement said.

Somaliland broke away from greater Somalia in 1991, months after the overthrow of former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre. It has since enjoyed relative prosperity but failed to secure recognition as an independent state.

Neighboring Puntland declared itself autonomous from the rest of Somalia in August 1998 under the leadership of Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, the current president of the Somali interim government.

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Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka president appeals for help at U.N. in reconstructing war-torn east Paul Burkhardt, Associated Press, 9/26/07

Sri Lanka's president appealed Tuesday for international support in rebuilding his country's east, where the army recently drove out Tamil Tiger rebels who had controlled the area for 13 years.

Addressing world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, President Mahinda Rajapaksa said plans were under way to hold elections in the province by early next year and vowed it would become "a model for development and rehabilitation."

"Despite the significant challenge posed by the ongoing conflict with a ruthless terrorist group in the north of the country, we have freed the eastern province from terrorism and restored law and order there," he said.

He asked countries to provide assistance for the reconstruction effort.

"There is a clear opportunity for the international community to play a vital role in breaking the cycle of conflict by focusing on development," he said.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for 24 years to create an independent state for the ethnic Tamil minority in north and eastern Sri Lanka following decades of discrimination by governments dominated by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

Government forces drove the rebels out of eastern Sri Lanka in July.

Human rights groups have accused the government of committing a wide array of human rights abuses in its fight against Tamil rebels.

Rajapaksa said his government's operations against the rebels were aimed at convincing "them that it will not be possible for them to obtain a military victory." But he stressed, "Our goal remains a negotiated and honorable end to this unfortunate conflict."

Heavy fighting has continued in the Mannar area along the southern edge of the de facto state the Tigers have set up in northern Sri Lanka. The government is weighing whether to launch an all-out offensive against the rebel heartland.

Military: Violence in northern Sri Lanka kills 25 rebels, 3 civilians, 1 soldier Ravi Nessman, Associated Press, 9/27/07

Artillery assaults, gunbattles and a bombing in northern Sri Lanka killed 25 rebels, three civilians and a soldier, the military said Thursday, stoking fears of a new escalation in the country's more than two- decade civil war.

The new fighting, much of it in thick, uninhabited jungle, came after days of increased violence along the border separating government-controlled territory and the rebels' heartland in the north.

The military blamed the surge in attacks on Tamil Tiger rebels, and denied the new wave of violence marked the start of an anticipated government offensive to crush the rebels in the north.

"They are the people who are initiating the fighting all this time because they are probing and coming across our forward defense lines and trying to inflict casualties," said Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara, a military spokesman.

Since Monday, the military has announced that more than 60 rebels have been killed in the fighting.

The Tamil Tigers said the military was massively inflating the rebels' casualty figures and understating its own. Rebel spokesman Rasiah Ilanthirayan blamed the recent violence on the government, but said the fighting was far less intense than the military reported.

"The motive behind this is purely political, I think," he said.

Residents of the town of Vavuniya, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the nearest reported fighting, said they could hear artillery and mortar shells exploding in the distance. Flights of military helicopters, used to evacuate casualties and bring in reinforcements, have increased in the area in recent days, residents said.

In the latest violence, a small group of rebels crossed over the front lines north of their de facto state in northern Sri Lanka at Muhamalai near the turbulent city of Jaffna early Wednesday, Nanayakkara said. Soldiers fought them off with small arms fire, killing four of them, and then raided rebel territory and destroyed three bunkers, he said.

In a second incident near Vavuniya, just south of rebel-controlled territory, soldiers and the rebels waged an artillery battle throughout the day Wednesday that killed seven rebel fighters and one soldier, Nanayakkara said.

Early Thursday another group of rebel fighters pushed across the northern front lines and waged a gunbattle with soldiers that killed six rebels and wounded two soldiers, he said. The soldiers then crossed the front line again and destroyed three other bunkers, he said.

Soldiers later killed five rebels who attempted to infiltrate the defense line at Nagarkovil in Jaffna, said an official at the defense ministry's media center, speaking on condition of anonymity due to policy.

Another rebel attack near the village of Periyamadu along the southern front lines on Thursday afternoon provoked retaliation from the military that killed three more rebels, Nanayakkara said.

Ilanthirayan disputed the death tolls, but said he did not yet have official figures from his side. He said the attacks were mainly conducted by small groups of soldiers and did not resemble other major government offensives.

In another attack Thursday morning, rebel fighters targeting a police car detonated a bomb attached to a bicycle in the government-controlled town of Chunnakam near Jaffna, killing three civilians and wounding 16 others, including two police officers, Nanayakkara said. Ilanthirayan said he knew nothing about the bombing.

The two sides have been fighting for more than two decades, with the Tigers demanding an independent homeland for minority Tamils in the northeast and the government, dominated by the Sinhalese majority, insisting that the country remain unified under a strong central government.

More than 70,000 people have been killed in the fighting, 5,000 of them since a 2002 cease-fire broke down in late 2005.

Tensions in the north have escalated since the government drove the Tigers out of eastern Sri Lanka in July, ending 13 years of rebel rule in that region. Top government officials have said they were preparing a major offensive in the north to crush the Tigers, though others in the government said no such operation was planned.

Nanayakkara said the Tigers have become more aggressive in the north, for fear they will be driven out of their last stronghold.

"They are trying their level best to defend their turf by inflicting some kind of casualties by engaging security forces," he said.

Sri Lankan foreign minister rejects demands for U.N. human rights monitoring mission Foster Klug, Associated Press, 10/1/07

Sri Lanka's foreign minister is rejecting calls for a United Nations human rights monitoring mission to be based in his country, saying such an outside force would interfere with local investigations.

Rohitha Bogollagama said his government, which has been locked in a struggle of more than two decades battle with Tamil Tiger rebels, has stepped up arrests, prosecutions and convictions of those accused of rights abuses.

"There is still room for improvement," Bogollagama said in an interview. But, he said, the government can continue to progress "without any outside so-called presence."

The U.S.-based Human Rights Watch has blamed the government and its armed allies for many of the more than 1,100 abductions reported between January 2006 and June 2007 and has asked for a U.N. human rights monitoring mission to work in Sri Lanka.

"When we have this type of presence coming in, that has an unwieldy effect on the local" investigations that Sri Lanka has started, Bogollagama said of the proposed U.N. mission. He traveled to Washington this week for meetings with White House, Defense Department and State Department officials.

The government has come under increasing international criticism for a series of high profile killings under unexplained circumstances amid a new wave of fighting in the past two years, including the execution-style slaying last year of 17 workers for the aid group Action Against Hunger.

Sri Lanka's foreign secretary, Palitha Kohona, said in an interview that an outside human rights intervention "could divert attention from a democracy struggling against a terrorist organization and provide a lifeline to a terrorist organization at a time that it is coming under increasing pressure to rejoin the mainstream."

Fighting on Sri Lanka has killed more than 70,000 people. The rebels demand an independent homeland for ethnic minority Tamils after years of discrimination by governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.

A Norway-brokered cease-fire took hold in 2002 but collapsed in December 2005 in a new wave of violence that now has killed more than 5,000 people and left hundreds of thousands displaced.

Government forces in July cleared the whole Eastern Province of rebels after 13 years, but the rebels continue to hold a part of the north where they run a virtual state.

The United Nations and international aid groups have a large presence in Sri Lanka, both in providing aid to victims of the fighting and to the survivors of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

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Sudan

Humanitarian workers face increased threats amid Darfur's chaos Alfred de Montesquiou, Associated Press, 9/27/07

Humanitarian groups are facing a new escalation of violence in Darfur, with over a dozen aid vehicles hijacked in recent days and employees abducted or critically injured. Several aid groups are questioning how much longer they can continue amid the spiraling chaos.

The attacks are unpredictable: Most have occurred on roads to refugee camps housing some of the 2.5 million people chased from their homes by Darfur's warfare. But gunmen have also struck within Nyala, capital of South Darfur state.

Earlier this week, a driver from the Christian aid group World Vision was ambushed and his car stolen in Nyala, as was another one a week earlier. Three of the group's local employees were also injured, one critically, in a separate attack on a convoy.

"The gunmen just jumped onto the road and sprayed the cars with bullets, it's a bit traumatizing," said Michael Arunga, the spokesman for World Vision.

"We aren't stopping our operations, but we're scaling-down to regroup and understand what is happening," he said. World Vision is one of the largest aid groups working in South Darfur, where it feeds 500,000 people and runs half a dozen clinics, emergency nutrition centers and child care units.

Several of the camps around the town are now so unsafe that humanitarian work is all but grinding to a halt.

In the Otash refugee camp next to Nyala, refugees lined-up at a World Vision clinic on a recent morning, fearing aid workers wouldn't come because of insecurity. The group has frozen all movements for its vehicles, but over a dozen nurses and health assistants showed up nonetheless in a private bus rented as an alternative.

"We need the charities to stay in the camps," said Khadija Moussa, a refugee who has spent four years in Otash and was being treated for malaria.

"We can't survive without them, the government knows that," she said, echoing widespread suspicions among Darfur refugees that authorities orchestrate the violence against aid groups so that they quit and let refugees fend for themselves. The government denies the claims.

With a budget of over US$1 billion a year and over 14,000 aid workers, the U.N. says Darfur is the world's largest ongoing humanitarian effort. It has repeatedly warned this effort could collapse if aid groups feel they are being directly targeted.

Since last week, a dozen cars carrying aid workers have been ambushed and their passengers robbed, three aid workers were kidnapped, and half a ton of food was looted in a refugee camp, the United Nations says.

Darfur's violence is constantly shifting, one sector flaring up as another calms down, making it difficult for humanitarian workers to assess why they are being attacked, and by whom. Suspects include bandits, militias aligned with the government and the region's various splintered rebel groups. Beyond the immediate goal of looting, the attackers' motives are uncertain.

The four-year-old conflict, in which more than 200,000 have been killed, pits the Arab-led government against ethnic African rebels who rose up complaining of discrimination. To put down the rebellion, Khartoum is accused of unleashing Arab janjaweed militiamen, who are blamed for widespread attacks and atrocities on villagers in the vast region of western Sudan.

The U.N. says attacks on humanitarian workers have risen 150 percent from June 2006 to June 2007. This year alone, more than 100 aid workers were kidnapped and 66 assaulted or raped, while over 60 aid convoys were ambushed and 100 vehicles hijacked, the U.N. says.

In South Darfur, aid workers say violence has considerably worsened over the past six months. "We don't know if it's a trend or just a reflection of the general chaos," said Abraham Hadoto, who heads World Vision in the area.

While several organizations have pulled out of Darfur or frozen their operations this year, Hadoto says his group will continue. "It can be demoralizing, but we are aware this is a war zone," he said. "We're committed to stay until we reach absolute breaking point."

The New York-based aid group spends over US$1 million per month in southern Darfur, with over 20 expatriate and 400 local staff proving aid to hundreds of thousands in refugee camps and remote villages.

The Sudanese government has offered armed protection to aid convoys, but humanitarian workers have declined to preserve their neutrality. Meanwhile, a 7,000-strong force of African Union peacekeepers has been unable to secure the region.

In the Otash camp, made up mainly of straw huts that house over 60,000 refugees, World Vision's center treats over 3,000 people a month for disease, malnutrition and pregnancies.

Patients all worried the clinic would close if attacks continued. They urged aid workers to cling on, hoping security would improve once a new hybrid force of 26,000 U.N. and AU peacekeepers begins to deploy in October.

"But if you want to leave, take us on the planes with you," said Moussa, the malaria patient. "We'll go anywhere away from this hell."

Security Council condemns "murderous attack" on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press, 10/2/07

The U.N. Security Council on Tuesday condemned the "murderous attack" on African Union peacekeepers in Darfur, reportedly committed by a rebel group, and demanded that no effort be spared to bring those responsible to justice.

After a day of disagreement over whether to call the attack a terrorist act perpetrated by rebels, as South Africa, Russia and some other council members wanted, a compromise was reached that does not absolutely identify the group responsible. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno, who briefed the council on Monday, said a joint investigation by the African Union and the United Nations would be conducted to identify the perpetrators and the United States, Britain, France and others said they wanted to wait for the outcome of the inquiry.

Rebels first attacked the AU peacekeepers' camp Saturday night and then returned Sunday morning, overrunning it and killing 10 peacekeepers and injuring 14 others. Most of the 157 peacekeepers on the base were Nigerian, but there were also military observers from Botswana, Senegal and Mali.

The presidential statement, agreed by consensus and read at a formal council meeting, recalled that the council resolution authorizing a 26,000-strong AU-U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and attacks on AU troops, civilians and humanitarian agencies.

"The council insists that all parties in the Sudan comply with this demand" and cooperate fully with the deployment of a U.N. heavy support package that the Security Council authorized to beef up the AU force and lay the groundwork for deployment of the hybrid force. It includes 3,000 U.N. troops, police and civilian personnel along with aircraft and other equipment.

The Security Council also deplored the fact that the attack took place ahead of Oct. 27 peace talks in Tripoli, Libya, organized by the AU and U.N.

"The council underlines that any attempt to undermine the peace process is unacceptable," the statement said.

"The council condemns this murderous attack and demands that no effort be spared so that the perpetrators be identified and brought to justice," it said. "The Security Council deplores the loss of life and injuries that resulted from this attack and conveys its sympathy to the governments, families and colleagues of those killed and injured."

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters afterwards that some council members had difficulty "to point any fingers at rebel groups."

The presidential statement said the council was briefed on the attack on Monday "reportedly committed by a rebel group."

"We wish it were stronger," Churkin said, "but we have to live with what was practically possible."

South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said Monday that "most of us feel that this was a terrorist act," and every report says it was done by rebels, but he said some council members argued that the council should wait for the results of the investigation.

Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdelmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed welcomed the council statement, saying "we are happy now that the Security has identified now the perpetrators of this heinous act."

He said Sudan also expected the council to take action against those impeding the peace process, including possible sanctions.

"One of the objectives of those who perpetrated this attack is to reserve a seat for them on the train of peace starting, or heading towards Tripoli, but I think they have just exposed themselves because they are just criminals. They can do no good to their country and their people as well as peace in Sudan," Mohamed said.

On Monday, he said the AU has already named some elements of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and Sudan Liberation Movement who had been "very visible" in the area as the perpetrators of the attack.

African Union vows justice for killers of Darfur peacekeepers Mohamed Hasni, Agence France Presse, 10/2/07

UN Security Council members condemned the killing of 10 peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region but failed to agree on a formal statement as the African Union began probing the unprecedented attack.

The weekend attack by a large, organized group of heavily armed fighters who overran the Haskanita camp in around 30 vehicles was the worst assault on the under-manned force since it deployed in July 2004.

"The inquiry is underway and we will make its conclusions public. Those who carried out this attack will be strongly sanctioned," said Noureddine Mezni, spokesman for the African Union Mission in Sudan (AMIS).

He declined to speculate on who was responsible.

The AU said seven of the dead were Nigerian with the others from Botswana, Mali and Senegal. It said eight people were seriously wounded and the death toll might rise. Mezni told AFP that three peacekeepers were still missing.

Most of the 57 who were initially reported missing in the raid gradually made their way back to an AMIS camp in North Kordofan near the scene of the attack, apparently unharmed.

Ghana's UN Ambassador Leslie Christian, who chairs the 15-member Security Council this month, said no agreement could be reached on a formal statement on the attack during Monday's closed-door session and it was decided to continue the discussions Tuesday.

"The recent attack... was condemned," Christian said. "There was a demand that no effort should be spared so the perpetrators are brought to justice."

South Africa's UN ambassador Dumisani Kumalo said that, according to UN officials, the assailants launched their attack on the base at 7:30 pm, then left and returned at 4:00 am to strike again.

"That's a very cruel terroristic attack," Kumalo said. "So we wanted very strong language," but he added that other members urged caution until more details were known about who carried out the attack.

Sudan's UN ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad said it was clear Darfur rebels were responsible.

He blamed some members of the Council who "gave mixed signals to the rebels by singling out only the government for criticism."

"That made them (the rebels) intransigent and gave them the impression they can do it and get away with it," he added.

The United States called for a planned AU-UN force many times stronger than the current mission to reach Darfur "as soon as possible"

"The human disaster that we face in that area is very troubling, it's something that needs to be addressed by the international community, including the UN peacekeeping force," US President George W. Bush's chief spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

Bush earlier directed US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to seek a new UN resolution to broaden economic sanctions on Sudan's leaders, expand an arms embargo on Sudan, and bar Sudanese military flights over Darfur.

The Russian foreign ministry said Moscow condemned the attack which it said was designed to scupper international efforts to broker a comprehensive peace settlement.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on Darfur's warring sides to recommit to a settlement, citing peace talks scheduled for Libya on October 27 and preparations for the joint deployment of AU-UN troops.

AU-UN joint envoy Rodolphe Adada, who flew to the main Darfur town of Al-Fasher to supervise the inquiry, said he was "appalled by the outrageous and deliberate attack."

The Arab League, of which Sudan is a member, called for those responsible to be brought to justice.

The under-equipped African force of around 7,000 troops from 26 countries patrolling Darfur, a region the size of France, is due to begin being replaced later this year by the hybrid 26,000-strong AU-UN force.

"Such irresponsible attacks constitute a serious violation to the ceasefire agreement," the new commander of the hybrid force, General Martin Luther Agwai, said, implicitly blaming rebels.

"Rebel groups, who indulge in such random violence and bloodshed, undermine their own credibility on any negotiation table."

However, one rebel group which last month called for a ceasefire blamed the government, saying only that the charge was based "on initial information gathered on the ground."

"The Sudan Liberation Movement condemns this senseless attack on the AU base in Darfur," said Nouri Abdallah, top aide to Ahmed Abdel Shafi, a key Darfur rebel faction leader based in Kampala.

Abdallah said he believed the attack was planned to "create havoc in Darfur ahead of the deployment of the AU-UN hybrid force... and an attempt to derail the political process."

Conflict and famine in Darfur have left at least 200,000 people dead and two million displaced since Khartoum enlisted Janjaweed Arab militia allies to put down an ethnic minority revolt in 2003.

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Uganda

DRC protests to Uganda after six die in border clash Agence France Presse, 9/26/07

Democratic Republic of Congo protested to Uganda Wednesday after six Congolese nationals were killed and five injured by Ugandan troops on Lake Albert, marking the border between the two countries.

"In the face of these serious acts resulting from irresponsible and unacceptable behavior by the Ugandan army, the (DRC foreign) ministry expresses the strongest protest of the government," a ministry statement delivered to the Ugandan embassy in Kinshasa said.

DR Congo "demands explanations from the Ugandan government" of the incident "which is not calculated to strengthen neither in the spirit or the letter" recent agreements concluded by the two neighbors.

The UN mission in DR Congo, MONUC, said Tuesday that there had been "two separate incidents" on Monday at Lake Albert, a region where oil was recently discovered.

"There was a firefight on Monday afternoon on Lake Albert in which six (Congolese) were killed and five were wounded," said MONUC's military spokesman Gabriel de Brosses.

De Brosses said the dead included a Congolese soldier, two other men, two women and a child.

According to witnesses speaking to the UN-backed Okapi radio, eight Ugandan soldiers on a motorised dinghy approached a civilian boat carrying around 40 passengers and opened fire after two Congolese soldiers aboard refused to give up their weapons.

A Ugandan army spokesman said earlier that two Congolese soldiers and one Ugandan soldier had died in a clash in Ugandan waters of the lake, involving a barge belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp.

But Heritage said its vessel was not involved.

Heritage said its vessel was "within Ugandan waters in Lake Albert in the process of lifting cables to mark the completion of a seismic survey" when a UN patrol boat detained the ship and its crew.

"This was a routine check, not hostile, and there was full cooperation. After a short interview at shore, the vessel and crew were released and returned to base in Uganda," a statement said. The clash between border forces was a "separate, unrelated, isolated incident," it added. "No employees or sub-contractors of Heritage were involved."

The company challenged a UN official, who told AFP the oil exploration vessel was escorted out of "Congolese waters" to "avoid increasing tensions" between the two nations and "to ensure the crew's safety."

In a second episode, according to the UN, Uruguayan soldiers belonging to MONUC discovered the Heritage vessel on the DR Congo side of the lake and escorted it to a Congolese border town, according to Michel Bonnardeaux, MONUC spokesman for civilian affairs.

He said no violence occurred at that time.

The Ugandan army spoke earlier of one incident involving the Heritage vessel in which three soldiers, two Congolese and one Ugandan, had died.

Kicoco Tabaro, army spokesman for western Uganda, insisted that the vessel belonging to Canada's Heritage Oil Corp had been on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert when it was seized and commandeered to the Congolese side.

Tension between the two Great Lakes nations has shot up since August 1 when Uganda accused DRC troops of killing a British engineer exploring for oil on the Ugandan side of Lake Albert.

Oil companies have been working in the region for many years, and last year Heritage and Australia's Hardman Resources said they had found large deposits there and would start extraction in 2009.

Uganda invaded DR Congo in 1998 during its neighbor’s civil war in 1998 on the ground it was tracking down Ugandan rebels. Some Ugandan troops were accused of wide rights abuses and of plundering gold and diamonds. Kampala and Kinshasa signed an agreement in September in Tanzania to open "joint oil exploration and exploitation" in Lake Albert.

Ugandan troops accused of plundering prized trees in south Sudan Bogonko Bosire, Agence France Presse, 9/28/07

Ugandan troops looted truckloads of valuable trees from south Sudan when they were pursuing Lord's Resistance Army rebels who were hiding in the region, a research group said on Friday.

The Swiss-based Small Arms Survey said the Uganda People's Defense Forces (UPDF) cut teak trees in southern Sudan's Equatoria region during Operation Iron Fist, which had been approved by the Khartoum government.

Local officials cited in the new report said the Ugandan forces failed to confront the LRA insurgents during the operation in southern Sudan and were instead involved in logging.

"From an economic perspective, keeping the war alive has become part of the lucrative economy for the army. Locals regularly reported that the UPDF cuts down teak trees to take them to Uganda," the group said in a report titled "The Lord's Resistance Army in Sudan: A History and Overview."

Even during the withdrawal of the UPDF from southern Sudan under the terms of a government-LRA truce agreement signed in August 2006, "the UPDF cut down around 200 trees in Palataka and carried them across the border before they were reported to authorities," it said.

The Palataka area in Eastern Equatoria is heavily forested with teak, a tropical hardwood used mainly in building ships and manufacturing outdoor furniture. The wood is valuable because it has natural oils that makes it water resistant.

A local southern Sudan administrator quoted in the report said: "The UPDF are business-minded people, they are logging timber in the Acholi area. Who gives them permission?" Uganda signed an agreement with Khartoum in 2002, allowing the country to deploy forces to pursue and flush out LRA insurgents from the heavily forested region.

"Since the UPDF came to Sudan, they have never had a face-to-face confrontation with the LRA. It is like the LRA have given them safe passage," the report quoted a local Sudan official in Magwi county.

"People wonder why the UPDF is here ... the UPDF should be asked politely to leave," the official added.

But the Ugandan army flatly rejected the claims and said the Small Arms Survey had strayed from its primary focus.

"That is incorrect," army spokesman Major Felix Kulaigye told AFP in Kampala. "The research was meant for small arms. How did it stray out and go to the teak tree. I think this is just to speak out so that they can attract funding," Kulaigye added.

"Our duties are to look for rebels in southern Sudan to maintain law and order along the road. How can we look for timber?" the report quoted a UPDF officer as saying.

Human rights groups and aid workers have accused the Ugandan army and LRA rebels -- at war since 1988 -- of attacking villages in southern Sudan.

In 2005, the United Nations accused Rwanda and Uganda of siphoning off profits from an illicit trade in gold, diamond and timber from the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where they had deployed troops supporting rebels during the 1998-2003 war in the DRC. Experts accused 54 people -- including more than 20 senior military and political officials in Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and the DRC itself -- of leading "elite networks" that exploited DRC natural resources.

Uganda urges world leaders to put pressure on rebels in peace talks Lily Hindy, Associated Press, 10/1/07

Uganda's foreign minister urged the international community on Monday to put pressure on leaders of the country's brutal 20-year insurgency to comply with peace agreements and set a deadline for negotiations to end.

Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa told world leaders at the United Nations ministerial meeting that the rebel Lord's Resistance Army has failed to meet requirements to which they have agreed since negotiations began last year, including gathering at neutral zone Ri-Kwangba just north of the Congo border to be monitored.

"We urge the international community to bring adequate pressure to bear on the LRA to assemble at Ri- Kwangba and to put a time frame on the talks. Talks cannot go on forever," Kutesa said.

Southern Sudan has been mediating talks between the LRA and the Ugandan government since July 2006. A truce has been signed, but the talks have not progressed much and have repeatedly stalled. Negotiations broke down in late December 2006 after the rebel movement walked out.

Talks nonetheless are seen as the best chance to end the conflict that has spilled over to neighboring regions in Congo and Sudan.

Fighting since the insurgency began in 1986 has left thousands dead and forced 1.7 million people to flee their homes, according to relief organizations.

The LRA is made up of the remnants of a rebellion that began after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took power that year. The rebels are notorious for cutting off the tongues and lips of civilians and abducting thousands of children, turning the girls into sex slaves and the boys into fighters.

The group's top five leaders have been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, but have repeatedly demanded immunity from prosecution in return for signing a peace deal. Museveni's government has promised not to turn them over in return for an end to the bloodshed.

Kutesa said his government will not condone impunity, and is "working closely with the ICC to ensure accountability."

"As we inch toward a comprehensive peace agreement, international support and understanding is required to balance the need for durable peace and stability on one hand and the imperative for justice on the other," Kutesa said.

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Prepared by Tracy Martin