{jcomments on}OMAR, AGNEWS, BXL, le 14 mars 2010 – www.presstv.ir- March 14, 2010–The government of the Central African Republic says it has foiled a coup plan to unseat President Francois Bozize.
RWANDA
France looks to put ghosts of Rwandan genocide to rest
By Edward Cody/Washington Post Foreign Service /Sunday, March 14, 2010
CESTAS, FRANCE — For years, the ghosts of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide have haunted France, finally intruding even into this tidy suburb of Bordeaux and the comfortable home of Sosthene Munyemana.
Munyemana, a French-trained gynecologist, was arrested here in January on an international warrant from the Rwandan government, which is seeking his extradition to face charges of rape, genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide and association with criminals to carry out genocide. The 55-year-old physician was released pending the outcome of a court hearing scheduled for June.
Munyemana’s case, which raised anew the issue of France’s long-criticized attitude toward the genocide, could hardly have been more poorly timed. After years of estrangement, the leaders of France and Rwanda have sought to reconcile despite lingering resentment over France’s close military and diplomatic ties to the Hutu-run government that was blamed for the massacre of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis during a civil war in 1994.
For Rwanda, now controlled by Tutsis, the rapprochement has meant an opportunity to deal normally with one of the main diplomatic and economic actors in Africa, where France retains numerous allies and considerable influence among its former colonies.
For France, renewal of relations has carried another message as well: hope for an end to the accusations at home and in Africa that French soldiers and political leaders stood by while Tutsis were being slaughtered by the thousands.
An official Rwandan investigation concluded two years ago that France had been “politically and militarily complicit” in the genocide. But a French parliamentary investigation in 1998 affirmed that the government at the time, headed by President François Mitterrand and Prime Minister Edouard Balladur, did nothing wrong.
Against that uneasy background, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, during a landmark visit to Kigali, the Rwandan capital, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame vowed last month to put the blood-soaked debate behind them — or at least to act as if the chapter were closed.
Acknowledging ‘errors’
Using carefully negotiated language, Sarkozy acknowledged for the first time that France and its troops in Rwanda at the time committed “errors” as the Tutsis were being killed by France’s Hutu allies. In return, Kagame, a former Tutsi rebel leader, dispatched an ambassador to Paris and promised to work with France in pacifying Congo and other areas of Central Africa’s war-racked Great Lakes region.
Munyemana, a Hutu who lives in France with his wife, said he has little faith in the reconciliation effort because it is based on “too many lies.” Too many people, in France and Rwanda, have something to hide, he said, and neither France nor Rwanda’s now-governing Tutsis have come to grips with everything that happened during those four bloody months.
The prosecution against him, he said in an interview, is based on a friendship gone sour, a Tutsi classmate at the University of Bordeaux who after the genocide decided to make Munyemana pay because he is a Hutu. Guided by the erstwhile friend, Munyemana said, French human rights activists went to Rwanda and gathered false testimony linking him to massacres in Tumba, where he worked at the time.
Much of that testimony ended up in Rwandan courts, where Munyemana was sentenced in absentia in 2008 to life in prison. In addition to unspecified rapes, the extradition request accused Munyemana of killing three people on the University of Butare campus and of cooperating with known genocide leaders in drawing up plans for many other killings.
“Everything is false,” he said. “There are people in there I didn’t even know. And there are people I know but that I never associated with. Sure, I knew some of the people involved in the massacres. But should I be held responsible for what they did?”
The main document alleging his involvement, Munyemana said, was later proven to be an unofficial compilation of charges and not a U.N. report as alleged. But the harm was done, and the reputation he built during 16 years of study and medical practice in France has been ruined, he added.
“The issue is not judged yet,” he said. “Waiting for the justice system to move, it’s a real pain.”
Munyemana’s attorneys have led him to expect a favorable ruling. So far, all extradition requests such as the one he is fighting have been turned down by French courts, which consistently have held that the Tutsi-run Rwandan justice system cannot guarantee a fair trial to Hutus accused of participation in the genocide.
Slow to act
Alain Gauthier, who heads the Civil Plaintiffs Collective representing genocide survivors, said that if French courts will not extradite exiles accused of participating in the killings, the government should put them on trial in France. Several Rwandans have been tried in Belgium and Switzerland, he noted, but the French justice system has been slow to move.
So slow, in fact, that the European Human Rights Court accused France of dragging its feet in the case of Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a priest accused of encouraging the genocide in his onetime Kigali parish who found refuge in France and now lives in a vicarage at Gisors, northwest of Paris.
Gauthier, who is married to a Rwandan Tutsi woman, said, however, that several encouraging signs have emerged in recent months as France and Rwanda negotiated their reconciliation. Four investigating magistrates have traveled to Rwanda to gather evidence for cases brought by the collective, he said, and the Justice Ministry has promised to set up a special cell equipped to investigate such crimes with more speed and efficiency.
In addition, French police this month briefly arrested Agathe Kanziga, the widow of Juvénal Habyarimana, the slain Rwandan president, in response to a Rwandan warrant accusing her of helping plan the genocide after his assassination. Like Munyemana, she was brought before a French court to decide on extradition and is awaiting a ruling.
Gauthier’s group has brought charges against 16 Rwandans living in France but estimates that several times that number could be present in the country without having been identified. Some of them, he said, particularly military officers with friends among French forces, were spirited out of Rwanda in French military aircraft after it became clear that Kagame’s rebel group was about to take power.
“If we had not filed complaints, those guilty of genocide would be living happily in France,” he said in an interview at his home in Reims. “Government prosecutors have not opened a single case. Nobody in France wants all these things to come out.”
In fact, he noted, the most prominent case brought by the French government was an indictment handed down against Kagame, accusing him of complicity in the April 1994 shooting down of an airplane carrying Habyarimana. Habyarimana’s killing, which outraged his fellow Hutu leaders, became the spark for the genocide.
UGANDA
TANZANIA:
CONGO RDC :
KENYA :
Mission using German media to promote Kenya
www.nation.co.ke/By ANTHONY KARIUKI/Posted Sunday, March 14 2010
The German mission to Kenya is carrying out an aggressive campaign as part of a wider strategy to market the country abroad.
It is using the German media to promote Kenya as a tourist destination through television adverts. The clip under the title magical Kenya, which mainly targets the population during rush hours, airs on TVs wired on trains- the main mode of transport for Germans.
The Germany ambassador to Kenya Mr Mutuma Kathurima also said that the embassy has eased visa processing to facilitate travel as part of the Brand Kenya promotion that also involves the Tourism Ministry and the Kenya Tourism Board.
“We have a launched a one-day service for visa and Germans can also apply for it online,” he said.
Mr Kathurima added that the embassy was using its website as a tool to disseminate information to the German public interested in Kenya.
“We have a robust website where we have managed to translate text to German and this was done four months ago.
“The response has been good and we have got a lot of feedback,” he said on Saturday at the sidelines of the International Tourism Bourse in Berlin, Germany.
The fair that started on Wednesday brought together tour operators, hotels, airlines among others from all over the world and ends on Sunday.
The ambassador said that his mission “is also travelling around the country (Germany) to meet and talk to people about our country.”
He said that the government was working on the issue of visa fees reduction by half and scrapping of the same for children below 16 years of age to encourage family travel.
The issue was “receiving active consultation,” he added.
Mr Kathurima also said that he had appealed to the government to make available more funds to market Kenya on the tourism front.
“Tourism occupies the third position as Kenya’s highest earner and we need more money.”
Giving the example of Kenya’s spending on the bourse such as printing brochures and hiring exhibitors’ space, he said that while he appreciated government’s effort, “it costs money.”
He warned that Kenya would suffer were the government to relax spending on tourism marketing, adding “If we stop advertising others overtake you.”
Mr Kathurima said he would be satisfied if the number of German tourists visiting Kenya surpasses that of Italians, pegging 72,000 tourists as a good number.
“We would have done a lot as an embassy, a ministry and as a board.”
He, however, decried the balance of payments deficit between Kenya and Germany saying that while the country exported goods worth Sh6 billion, Germany’s value stood at Sh26 billion, according to 2008 figures.
A KTB official said that most visitors to the Kenya tent inquired on how to develop an itinerary, infrastructure especially travelling to the Mara Game Reserve and accommodation.
The official, who requested anonymity as he is not authorised to speak on behalf of the board, added that the board had launched a campaign titled Jambo, aimed at showcasing the diversification of Kenya including its culture, adventure, night life and niche products such as wildlife.
He revealed that the documentary was airing on international and is meant “at showing Kenya beyond what is generally known.”
ANGOLA :
SOUTH AFRICA:
Gandhian Fatima Meer’s biographer vows to carry on
www.zeenews.com/Sunday, March 14, 2010
London: The London-based biographer of Fatima Meer, the prominent Gandhian and political activist who died in South Africa on Friday, regrets that the biography could not be completed before she passed away but is committed to finish it soon.
Arjum Wajid, a senior BBC Urdu Service journalist who has known Meer for decades, was at an advanced stage of writing Meer’s biography when she passed away in Durban aged 81, leaving behind a legion of followers in South Africa and across the world.
Wajid, who has hours of taped conversations with Meer for the biography, told PTI: “I am devastated, but am going to carry on writing the biography. I have all that is needed to write it. I am now committed to it more than ever. I owe it to her.”
Unable to come to terms with Meer’s passing away, Wajid recalls several anecdotes and key moments in Meer’s life that saw her play a key role in anti-apartheid politics in South Africa.
Her political work brought her close to Nelson Mandela. Meer’s family originates in Surat.
She would often recount the tumultuous days of 1947 when her family was also divided along with the division of British India into India and Pakistan.
“Meer was a disciple of Gandhi, and she would often tell us the story of how she and her husband were Gandhi followers while others in the family went along with Mohammad Ali Jinnah,” Wajid said.
Meer had conducted extensive research into Gandhi and his writings, which led to two books, ‘Apprenticeship of a Mahatma’ and ‘The South African Gandhi: The Speeches and Writings of M K Gandhi’.
She wrote the screenplay for ‘The Making of the Mahatma’, a Shyam Benegal film which was based on ‘The Apprenticeship of a Mahatma’.
The film was co-produced by India and South Africa. Paying tributes to Meer’s free spirit, Wajid said Meer was closely associated with the Natal Indian Congress and the African National Congress, but never joined any political party.
“She was too independent in her thinking and action to be bound by any political party. She was a close friend of Nelson Mandela, but that did not stop her from criticising him as well. Mandela chose Meer to write his official biography,” Wajid said.
She said over the years Meer assiduously collected Gandhi’s effects and writings during his time in South Africa. Meer saved Gandhi’s possessions when his settlement in Pheonix had been attacked during riots.
The settlement – the first Ashram of Gandhi in South Africa – had been damaged in 1985 riots when some African squatters occupied much of the settlement, and named it Bambayi.
Though the Indian community was deeply distressed, it refrained from seeking the forcible eviction of the squatters.
In 2000, the Phoenix Settlement Trust, with financial assistance from the Government of India, restored Gandhi’s house and established a clinic, an HIV/Aids Centre and other facilities to serve all the people in the area, African and Indian.
Wajid recalled Meer often insisting that she stayed with her during visits to South Africa, and said she spoke to Meer two weeks ago when the latter was in hospital.
“The first thing she asked me was ‘Why aren’t you here?’ She thought I was in Durban,” he said.
Meer was on the staff of the University of Natal from 1956 to 1988 and was also a visiting professor at a number of universities in South Africa, the US, India, Mauritius, the Caribbean and Britain.
She is also a fellow of the London School of Economics.
She received two honorary doctorates for her work for human and women’s rights.
Her father, Musa Meer, was editor of Indian Views, a newspaper founded in 1912.
PTI
South Africa warding off price gouging for World Cup
By Donna Bryson • Associated Press / March 14, 2010
JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s tourism ministry has ordered an investigation into allegations that World Cup hotel prices are unreasonably high, one month after a similar government probe was launched to find out whether local airlines were colluding to inflate fares.
The hotel allegations have worried operators and others in South Africa’s tourism business, who called a news conference recently to deny them.
Members of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa, an industry group, welcomed the investigation announced by Tourism Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk and said they were sure an independent inquiry would prove that most of them were not inflating room rates.
Business leaders have urged South Africans not to take advantage of people visiting to see soccer’s World Cup, saying profiteering would keep tourists from returning.
Jabu Mabuza, chairman of South Africa’s state-owned tourism development company and chief executive of a national hotel and casino chain, said the strategy has been to market the country not as cheap, but as a place where a traveler can get value for money.
“It is quite disturbing to us … that there are people who have reportedly tripled prices,” he told reporters.
No one disputes prices will be higher during the World Cup, but the question is what is reasonable.
“In recent weeks we have noted allegations that accommodation establishments in the tourism industry are not responsible, and are inflating prices excessively,” the tourism minister said in a statement.
“Until now our impression has been that this is not the case, but we believe it should be investigated and the results of the investigation made public.”
Ministry spokeswoman Ronel Bester said last week that it was too early to say what action might be taken if prices are deemed too high.
The probe follows an investigation announced late last month into whether South African airlines are colluding to inflate prices during the June 11-July 11 World Cup.
That investigation is being conducted by the government’s Competition Commission, which is responsible for limiting monopolies and has a tribunal with the power to impose fines and other penalties. Keitumetse Letebele, a spokeswoman for the commission, said was not yet clear when the probe would be completed.
An Internet check showed a flight from Johannesburg to Cape Town, which would normally cost $112, would cost $164 a day after the World Cup kicks off. A $148 room at a midrange hotel near Johannesburg’s airport would be at least one-third more during the World Cup. Flights from the United States are also being offered in early June for more than twice the price of flights in the coming weeks, at around $2,500-$3,000 roundtrip just before the competition, compared with around $1,100-$1,200 in early spring.
Tourism business leaders said the higher prices simply reflect higher demand. They add that though the World Cup falls during the South African winter, usually the low season, it will be treated as the high season because of the tournament.
Mmatsatsi Marobe, chief executive of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa acknowledged “sporadic” instances of excessively high prices, but stressed they were not widespread.
“The market dictates what prices people charge,” she said, adding a warning for those who think the World Cup market can bear anything. “If you are going to be overcharging, guess what, your room is going to be empty.”
Marobe advised consumers to shop around, check the Internet and compare what different tour companies are offering.
Jaime Byrom, executive chairman of MATCH, directed by soccer’s ruling body, FIFA, with organizing accommodation during World Cups, appeared alongside Marobe at the news conference.
Byrom said that
compared with previous tournaments, this year’s World Cup won’t be cheap. Europeans accustomed to hopping across a border for matches will have to travel much farther, and that costs more. He also cited the strength of South Africa’s currency.
Byrom said any profiteering in South Africa did not differ from what has been experienced at other World Cups. He has contracted with South African hotels and inns to offer rooms to World Cup fans.
“We certainly received fair prices and reasonable terms of business that we were able to pass on to our customers,” he said, calling reports of price gouging exaggerated. “Once it’s out there, this bad news seems to have very long legs.”
AFRICA / AU :
‘Coup attempt thwarted in Central Africa Republic’
Sun, 14 Mar 2010 /www.presstv.ir
The government of the Central African Republic says it has foiled a coup plan to unseat President Francois Bozize.
The country’s National Security Minister Jules Bernard Ouande said Saturday that unnamed soldiers and politicians with links to former President Ange Felix Patasse have been planning to launch a coup d’etat on March 15, AFP reported.
“It was marked ‘Plan of Attack’,” Ouande was quoted by the French news agency as saying about the purported coup in a radio speech.
“I can tell you that when it obtained this information, the Central African government took all necessary action,” Ouande added in the statement.
Patasse has strongly denied the charges and alleged that the authorities were trying to eliminate him as a threat in the April 25 presidential elections.
Bozize came to power in 2003 after leading a rebellion against the then government of Patasse who was a two-time president from 1993 to 2003.
GHN/SC/DT
Tropical Storm in Madagascar: 14 dead, 37,891 affected
ennahar/ 14 March, 2010
ANTANANARIVO – At least fourteen people were killed and over 37,800 are affected after the passage of severe tropical storm «Hubert» that hit Madagascar this week, according to a provisional report issued Saturday by the Malagasy authorities.
“There were currently 14 dead, two missing and 37,891 victims, on the east coast, told AFP the communication service of the National Bureau of Risk Management and Disaster (BNGRC).
Tropical Storm Hubert led the entire week of heavy rains in Madagascar, and has not dispelled until Friday morning.
Many have touched damage infrastructure and crops have been listed on the front southeast of the Big Island.
“Our biggest problem now is the evacuation of victims, the body of civil protection is out this Saturday to perform this mission,” said BNGRC, who adds that 50 tons of rice have been mobilized for each of the most affected six districts.
A meeting led by BNGRC held Saturday morning in the presence of relevant ministries, UN and several NGOs and a flyby mission is currently underway.
Hubert was the first hurricane to cause serious damage in Madagascar since the start of hurricane season, which extends from November to April.
Last year, at least 24 people were killed during the passage of two hurricanes.
In January and February 2008, crossings cyclones Fame and Ivan killed at least 97 people in Madagascar. In March 2007, Cyclone Indlala had made 150 dead and 30 missing in Grand Island.
UN /ONU :
USA :
U.S. Muslim convert among 7 arrested in Ireland
Keith Coffman/Reuters/Mar 14, 2010
DENVER
(Reuters) – A Colorado woman who converted to Islam last year and was lured to Europe by online extremists was among seven people arrested in Ireland in connection with a suspected plot to murder a Swedish cartoonist, her parents said on Saturday.
The arrest of Jamie Paulin Ramirez, a 31-year-old mother, confirmed by a U.S. law enforcement source who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, marks the second American woman linked to such a conspiracy in recent days.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it has charged Colleen LaRose, a suburban Philadelphia woman who used the online pseudonyms “Fatima LaRose” and “JihadJane,” with plotting to kill an unnamed Swedish man and using the Internet to enlist co-conspirators.
Separately, Irish police said on Tuesday they had detained seven individuals as part of an investigation into a plot to assassinate cartoonist Lars Vilks of Sweden in retaliation for a drawing that depicted the Prophet Mohammad with dog’s body.
That cartoon is said to have prompted an Iraqi group linked to al Qaeda to place a $100,000 bounty on Vilk’s life. Three of those arrested were released late on Friday, police said.
U.S. officials have declined to comment on whether the indictment of “JihadJane,” who has been in U.S. custody since last October, was connected to the suspected Vilks plot.
But Ramirez’s mother and stepfather, Christine and George Mott of Leadville, Colorado, said they believe their daughter was recruited by LaRose, who they say introduced Ramirez to an Algerian man she married after moving to Ireland in September.
“These terrorists came into my home through the Internet, uninvited, and have ripped my family apart,” Christine Mott told Reuters in a telephone interview from the family’s home in Leadville, a small, picturesque town in the Rocky Mountains about 80 miles southwest of Denver.
SON IN FOSTER CARE
The Motts said their daughter took her six-year-old son with her to Ireland, and that he had been placed in foster care since Ramirez’s arrest on Tuesday with six others, including her newly wed Algerian husband. Her parents described the Algerian as “JihadJane’s main contact over there.”
Of the four men and three women arrested in Ireland, aged mid-20s to late-40s, police said one man and two women were released from custody in the southern county of Waterford on Friday. Christine Mott said she was informed on Saturday that her daughter was among those released.
The Motts said Ramirez had been living with her son in their home and studying to be a nurse practitioner when she stunned relatives by announcing her conversion to Islam.
Christine Mott said her daughter had been conversing on the Internet with individuals who seemed to be extremists. She also began covering herself with a traditional head scarf, or hijab, worn by devout Muslim women, her mother said.
In September, Ramirez vanished, prompting the family to file a missing-persons report with local police. George Mott, himself a convert to Islam, said he talked to FBI agents and handed over Ramirez’s computer to them as evidence of the parents’ concerns that she had fallen in with extremists.
In October, Ramirez called her parents from Ireland to report that she and her son were safe and living there.
Christine Mott said she has talked regularly with her grandson until this week, and was devastated when he told her in a recent conversation that “‘We hate Christians,'” leading to a heated quarrel with her daughter over the phone.
She said her main concern now was to get her grandson back to the United States.
Vilks, who said he has prepared a secure room in his house with barricades in case of any break-in, told Reuters on Wednesday he had received more death threats through Internet messages since the arrests were made.
In January, a Somali man was indicted on charges he broke into the home of Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and threatened him with an ax. A Westergaard cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammad with a turban shaped like a bomb sparked outrage across the Muslim world in 2005, with at least 50 people killed in riots in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
(Reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; additional reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin; editing by Anthony Boadle and Todd Eastham)
CANADA :
AUSTRALIA :
EUROPE :
ECOWAS, EU to resume EPA negotiations shortly
Pana/14/03/2010
Abuja –
News – Africa news .West African negotiators expect unequivocal commitment from the European Union (EU) to a proposed Development Fund for West Africa when b oth regions resume negotiations on 17 March for a new trade regime to create a free trade area, according to a press release from the ECOWAS Commission in Abuja, the Nigerian capital.
This follows an experts-level workshop of the Ministerial Monitoring Committee (MMC), which oversees the negotiation for the region.
The size of the Fund, the Economic Partnership Agreement Development Programme (EPADP), the contributions expected from the two regions and the conditions for accessing the Fund are among the outstanding issues in the negotiations.
At the end of an experts-level workshop in Cotonou, Benin, the experts stressed the importance of the EPADP to West Africa’s integration process and competitiveness to ensure a mutually-beneficial EPA. This will ensure that the region benefits from the liberalized access to the European market envisaged by the agreement.
West Africa is insisting on being apprised of the ‘dedicated source and accessibility’ to the Fund within the ongoing negotiation of their EPA.
The Fund is designed to enable the region address its infrastructural deficiencies and improve its competitiveness so that it can avail itself of the benefits of the new trade arrangement meant to replace the interim Cotonou Partnership Agreement.
Regional leaders have repeatedly insisted that the EU make substantial financial contribution to the Fund as a precondition to the signing of the EPA.
In anticipation of the EPADP, the experts urged ECOWAS member States to undertake various activities, including finalizing the prioritization of the activities in the regional operational plans, and project sheets according to the roadmap ad o pted by experts at the regional workshop on operational plans held in Praia, Cape Verde, from 2-5 March which should be submitted to the ECOWAS Commission latest by 30 March.
In addition, they urged the ECOWAS Commission to proceed with the process of developing the regional programme for fiscal reforms by specifying country-level activities and the regional ones, based on subsidiarity principles while the ECOWAS
and UEMOA Commissions should finalize the studies on the establishment of the EPA Regional Fund (EPARF) and propose appropriate measures to facilitate access to resources and increase capacity to absorb the funding to be mobilized as part of the EPA implementation.
Moreover, they urged the region’s negotiators to obtain from the European party an urgent response to the issue of EPADP financing and ensure that EU commitment was unique and global to enable all the member States access from sufficient resources to meet the desired objectives.
In order to expand the scope of contributors to the Fund, they encouraged West Africa to take steps to avail itself of the interest shown in the EPADP by some donors, including the World Bank and the African Development Bank during the meeting on Trade Aid held in Abuja on 27-28 January, 2010.
The three-day workshop was convened by the ECOWAS and UEMOA Commissions to update the experts on the status of the negotiations since their last meeting on 15 May, 2009, particularly in relation to the implementation of the directives of the MMC relating to the four core thematic areas of the EPA.
These are the EPADP, the issue of market access, the rules of origin and the dr ft text of the agreement.
The workshop enabled officials from the ECOWAS and UEMOA Commissions and regional Ambassadors involved with the negotiations to update the experts on the various meetings that were held in Brussels, Dakar, Abidjan and Abuja to narrow the differences between the two regions on these core issues.
Also, among the outstanding issues are the status of the seven-year-old 0.5 per cent Community Levy charged by West Africa for imports from outside the region that have been used to finance its programmes and administration but which the European Commission considers a tariff barrier that should be scrapped.
The experts endorsed the position of the regional negotiators concerning the critical role of the levy for the Community but canvassed a political solution of other issues such as that of the Most Favoured Nation status under which the EU wants to benefit from trade preferences extended by West Africa to other developing regions as well as the non-execution clauses.
The experts acknowledged that significant progress had been made in the four the matic areas. This includes the issue of market access following the decision of the region’s chief negotiators to jettison the threshold approach, a decision that compelled the two sides to narrow their differences through undertaking a comprehensive sectoral economic analysis.
The analysis has resulted in a market access liberalization schedule for West Africa of nearly 70 per cent and approximately 30 per cent exclusion over a 25-year period. The experts also acknowledged other positive developments with the technical aspects of the Community Levy as well as the draft text and the rules of origin
CHINA :
Wen Jiabao says snubbed at Copenhagen climate meet
Sunday, March 14, 2010 /www.dnaindia.com/PTI
Beijing: Chinese premier Wen Jiabao today disclosed he was snubbed at the Copenhagen climate change conference in December last year as he was not notified of a key meeting of a group of countries on the eve of the summit of leaders.
The diplomatic snub against the Chinese delegation during the summit to tackle global warming was “still a mystery,” Wen, 67, told a press conference here after the conclusion of the annual session of the Chinese Parliament.
The premier, who was heading the Chinese delegation at the meet, said he and his team had not received any invitation to a small-scope meeting among several countries’ leaders on December 17, though Beijing’s name was mentioned in the list of participants.
“We haven’t received any explanation until now (about not being notified of the meeting). It’s still a mystery to me.”
Wen made the unusually candid remarks after he was asked to comment on his decision not to attend the key meeting before the December 18 summit, a move which was being perceived as “arrogant.”
“It still perplexes me why some people keep trying to make an issue about China (in this regard),” he said.
Wen said he learnt from a European leader, at a banquet hosted by the Danish Queen on December 17, about the meeting that was to be held later in the evening and then found out China was on the list of the meeting’s participating nations.
“I was shocked as I had received no notification that China was invited,” he said. China, the largest emitter of the greenhouse gases, was blamed by many delegates at the UN-sponsored meet for the failure of the Copenhagen talks to produce any binding agreement.
Negotiators, led by US president Barack Obama, attempted to salvage the talks at the last minute with a voluntary, non-binding Copenhagen Accord.
China, which had teamed up other fast developing countries like India, Brazil and South Africa, had contended tat developing nations should not be subjected to the same limits on carbon emissions as developed States such as the US.
However, Wen said China would continue to work with the international community to advance the efforts to tackle the climate change.
He said he wrote to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and Danish prime minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen at the end of
January, expressing in clear-cut terms that Beijing highly commends and supports the Copenhagen Accord.
China recently once again wrote to the United Nations, saying it fully backed the Copenhagen Accord, he added.
“The issue of climate change concerns human survival, the interests of all countries, and equity and justice in our international communities,” he said.
“We are fully justified to stick to the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities,'” he said.
China has pledged to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 40 to 45% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels.
INDIA :
BRASIL:
EN BREF, CE 14 mars 2010 … AGNEWS / OMAR, BXL,14/03/2010
