KT 3-4-2013_Layout 1 - Kuwait Times

BAMAKO: The EU began a top-to-toe
overhaul of Mali’s ragtag army yesterday
to help its soldiers take the place
of foreign troops defending the west
African nation against an Islamist
insurgency. The first of four battalions
arrived in Koulikoro, 60 kilometers
from the capital Bamako, to train
under battle-hardened European
instructors as part of a wider effort to
bring the army up to scratch as quickly
as possible.
“The 570 men of the Malian army
have just arrived at the training site in
Koulikoro,” Lieutenant-Colonel Philippe
de Cussac, spokesman for the
European Union Training Mission in
Mali (EUTM) said. “Initially, the training
will be very general. Afterwards, there
will be a specialized training in
telecommunications, artillery and
engineering. We will also train special
forces elite snipers.” Around 200 trainers
will come from France, the United
Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania,
Luxembourg and Ireland, de Cussac
said.
France, which sent 4,000 troops to
its former colony in January to block
an advance on the capital from the
north by Al-Qaeda-linked fighters, is
the lead country in the 10-week mission.
Paris is preparing to hand over to
a UN-mandated African force of 6,300
in the coming weeks, placing a spotlight
on Mali’s poorly-paid, illequipped
and badly-organized armed
forces.
The Malian military fell apart last
year when well-armed Islamist extremists
seized the country’s vast northern
desert, terrorizing locals with amputations
and executions performed under
a brutal interpretation of sharia Islamic
law. The French-led intervention quickly
drove out the insurgents but significant
pockets of resistance remain in
the Ifoghas mountains as well as in the
northern cities of Gao and Timbuktu.
In the latest spate of violence,
Islamist gunmen used the confusion
created by a suicide bomber on
Saturday to infiltrate Timbuktu and
engage French and Malian troops in
fighting that left at least eight rebels, a
soldier and a civilian dead. A
spokesman for the Movement for
Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, one
of three armed Islamist groups operating
in northern Mali, was quoted by
the Mauritanian online news portal
ANI, as threatening France and its
allies with “more jihadist actions”.
Around half of the estimated 6,000
remaining Malian troops will train over
the next year with the EUTM, which
INTERNATIONAL
EU troops begin Mali training mission
will run on a budget of 12.3 million
euros ($15.8 million), with a first batch
expected to be ready for combat in the
north by early July. Once trained, each
of the four Mali battalions will have a
unified command with an infantrymobile
core, backed by artillery and
engineering, and a logistics component.
French General Francois
Lecointre, who heads the EUTM, said
the Malian army’s poor and “heterogeneous”
equipment, made up of material
donated by richer nations over two
decades, was a big problem for the
mission.
The bigger issue however is the
army’s lack of a clear hierarchy and
chain of command, with little team
spirit, he said. The United States had
initially begun an ambitious program
to train a new generation of Malian
officers as part of a counter-terrorism
program in North and West Africa but
the effort ended in embarrassment for
Washington. One of the officers who
attended several courses with the US
military, Captain Amadou Sanago, led
a coup against the Malian government
last March, prompting Washington to
suspend its security assistance.
And when militants pushed out of
the north last year, some of the Malian
army units ended up defecting, with
Napolitano hosts talks
as deadlock drags on KANO: Weekend attacks on three com-
ROME: Italian President Giorgio
Napolitano yesterday hosted experts
from two working groups aimed at finding
common ground for bickering political
leaders who have failed to form a new
government as Prime Minister Mario
Monti’s cabinet limps on. Elections in the
euro-zone’s third largest economy more
than a month ago resulted in a threeway
split between Pier Luigi Bersani’s
centre-left, Silvio Berlusconi’s centreright
and a new protest party led by former
comedian Beppe Grillo.
Talks have proved inconclusive and
Napolitano on Saturday said he was setting
up two working groups-one for
political reforms, the other for economic
ones-as a way of trying to forge an
agreement at least on a few fundamental
reforms. The groups include constitutional
expert Valerio Onida and will look into
cutting bureaucratic costs and reducing
the number of lawmakers in the Italian
parliament - 945 including deputies in
the lower house and senators in the
upper house.
Emergency economic measures are
also on the agenda as the country
endures its sixth consecutive quarter of
recession and the unemployment rate
remains close to record highs at 11.6 percent.
Some experts say Napolitano’s initiative
could be aimed at forging a crossparty
government deal similar to the one
struck in the Netherlands in October
2012 two months after inconclusive
polls. But Berlusconi’s People of Freedom
party has already criticized the move as a
delaying tactic, insisting there should be
new elections if no solution can be found
to the deadlock. A recent poll indicated
that the 76-year-old Berlusconi-a scandal-tainted
billionaire tycoon who has
called for the abolition of an unpopular
property tax imposed by Monti and criticized
Germany’s role in Europe would
win elections. “The house is burning. No
one would understand more delays,” said
Angelino Alfano, secretary general of
Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.
The SWG poll published last week gave
Berlusconi 32.5 percent compared to
29.6 percent for Bersani.
“Napolitano wanted to send a reassuring
signal... and show that 10 intelligent
and well-intentioned people can
agree on some useful objectives for the
future of the country,” said Sergio
Romano, a columnist for the Corriere della
Sera daily. The 87-year-old Napolitano’s
tactic appeared to be working, with borrowing
costs down and the Milan stock
market trading in positive territory after
falling slightly at the start of the session.
Napolitano considered resigning over
the crisis but was persuaded not to by
European Central Bank chief Mario
Draghi, Italian media reported.
A resignation “would have exposed
the country to a very grave risk in terms
of its international credibility,” Ugo De
Siervo, former head of Italy’s top court,
said in La Repubblica daily. De Siervo said
Napolitano’s plan was to “encourage the
parties to show greater responsibility”
and prepare for the end of his mandate
on May 15, by which time parliament has
to elect a new president. Napolitano cannot
call new elections because he is in
the last months of his seven-year mandate
but his successor would be able to
do so. Monti’s government will stay in
place with interim powers until a new
government is formed.— AFP
UK ‘plotted’ to kill Congo’s Lumumba
LONDON: A former British intelligence officer claimed that
Britain played a role in the assassination of Congolese independence
hero Patrice Lumumba, one of her friends has told the
British media. Before she died three years ago, Daphne Park-who
was sent as an MI6 officer to the Belgian Congo in 1959 - told a
fellow member of Britain’s House of Lords that she had helped
coordinate Britain’s role in Lumumba’s elimination two years later.
The claim will spark surprise because the former colonial power
Belgium concluded in 2001 that it had a “moral responsibility”
in the assassination of Lumumba, Congo’s first democraticallyelected
prime minister. David Lea said in a letter to the London
Review of Books that he had a conversation with Park in 2009 —
a year before she died-in which they discussed the likelihood of
Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence agency being involved in
Lumumba’s death. “It so happens that I was having a cup of tea
with Daphne Park a few months before she died,” Lea said.
“I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction
and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had
something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied. ‘I organized it’.” “It
was a conversation-stopper. I was stunned,” Lea said, adding that
he concluded from the exchange that whoever was directly culpable
for Lumumba’s death, the British government was “at the
centre of the spider’s web”. His letter was in response to a new
book on the British secret services called “Empire of Secrets:
British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire”.
Park is said to have had a high degree of influence in the
region after she was appointed consul and first secretary in
Leopoldville-now known as Kinshasa-in 1959, one year before
Congo won its independence from Belgium. The CIA is also
believed to have played a role in organizing the plot to eliminate
Lumumba, because of his growing alliance with the Soviet Union.
Lumumba was killed by firing squad after a coup led by Joseph-
Desire Mobutu. Mobutu renamed the country Zaire. It is now
known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lumumba’s death
is to be the subject of a judicial probe in Belgium after a court
gave the go-ahead last year.— AFP
LEOPOLDVILLE: File picture taken in December 1960,
shows soldiers guarding Patrice Lumumba (right),
Prime Minister of then Congo-Kinshasa, and Joseph
Okito (left), vice-president of the Senate, upon their
arrest in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa). — AFP
Tanzania quarry
collapse kills 13
ARUSHA: At least 13 people were killed in the northern
Tanzanian city of Arusha when the sides of a quarry caved in, a
local official said yesterday. “There are 13 dead but rescuers
managed to save two people,” said Mulongo Magessa, governor
of Arusha province, of the accident that took place late
Monday morning, days after a building collapse killed 36 people
in the east African nation’s commercial capital.
“One person remains in hospital, the other has been
released,” Magessa added. Those who died were believed to
have been digging in the small quarry for rocks and sand for
use at construction projects in Arusha. Security forces and
local volunteers pulled out the bodies of the victims on
Monday, local media said. Tanzania has been hit by heavy seasonal
rains causing flash floods that weakened the sides of the
quarry, which is understood to have been illegal. Digging at
the site was declared illegal in 2006 after a similar incident in
which several people died.
Meanwhile, rescuers said they had ended the search in the
port city of Dar es Salaam four days after the building collapse,
saying the final number killed in that accident was 36.
“We have now called off the rescue operation,” the city’s commissioner
Saidi Mecky Sadicky told reporters. Two children
were among the dead. Local residents had turned out to supply
rescuers with food, water and medication.
“I want to thank all those who participated in this exercise,
the people of Dar es Salaam and Tanzania will forever be
grateful,” Sadicky added. Between 60 and 70 were initially
thought to have been around the partially-built 16-storey
building when it came crashing down on Friday morning in
the Kisutu area of the coastal city. Sadicky said investigations
were continuing into the cause of the building collapse, and
that police were holding eight people for questioning.
Dar es Salaam, a major port for east Africa and home to
some four million people, is rapidly expanding, and is one of
the world’s fastest growing cities, according to United Nations
figures. Construction projects crowd the city, including several
high-rise developments, although the majority of people live
in simple, informal housing.—AFP
munities in volatile and ethnically
divided central Nigeria have left 19
people dead and displaced some 4,500
others, a local official said yesterday.
The attacks were believed to be
reprisals in a dispute involving mainly
Muslim Fulanis and the mostly
Christian Atakar ethnic group.
“From the death toll we’ve compiled,
19 people including women and children
were killed by gunmen we suspect
to be Fulani herdsmen in attacks on
three communities on Saturday night
through Sunday,” local government official
Kumai Badu said of the violence in
the Kaura district, a remote region of
Kaduna state.
Fulanis in the area tend to be
nomadic herdsmen, while Atakar are
mainly farmers. Land disputes often
flare up between the two groups. Badu
added that some 4,500 people were displaced
and two camps had been set up
to house them. “Apart from the gun
weapons and hardware falling into the
hands of Islamist militants. It was a
sobering outcome for the US, which
has touted the idea of training foreign
armies to fight terror threats instead of
launching more ground wars with
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 2013
American troops. The experience
helped shape the Obama administration’s
cautious response to the French
military intervention in Mali, with the
US providing only limited support to
French forces.— AFP
TIMBUKTU: Malian soldiers enter the historic city of Timbuktu occupied for
10 months by Islamists who imposed a harsh form of sharia.— AFP
19 killed in Nigeria
Communities battle in volatile central Nigeria
attacks, the assailants also set fire to
homes,” he said. Kaduna state police
commissioner Olufemi Adenaike confirmed
that “some villages were
attacked by gunmen suspected to be
Fulani”, but said he could not yet provide
a death toll.
“There has been some misunderstanding
between the Fulani and the
Atakar communities for some time,” he
said. “We have dispatched our men for a
thorough assessment of the situation.”
Southern Kaduna state, where the
attack occurred, is located in the Middle
Belt region dividing Nigeria’s mainly
Christian south and its mostly Muslim
north. Hundreds were killed in riots in
southern Kaduna after 2011 elections,
with most of the victims Muslim,
according to Human Rights Watch.
Speaking of the weekend violence,
Badu said “the attack we believe was in
response to the poisoning of some
herds by some local farmers over
encroachment into their farmlands”.
Dozens have been killed over the last
couple of weeks in similar ethnic violence
in neighboring Plateau state.
Last week, violence involving rival
ethnic groups killed at least 36 people
and left dozens of houses burnt in
Plateau. Those casualties were in addition
to at least 23 people killed in
attacks the previous week in Plateau on
March 20 and 21.
Security was boosted in those areas
for Sunday’s Easter holiday, as was the
case in much of the country, since
churches have previously been targeted
for attacks on Christian holidays. Nigeria
is Africa’s largest oil producer and most
populous nation with some 160 million
people and 250 ethnic groups. Ethnic
violence regularly breaks out over local
politics, land or other factors. Islamist
extremist group Boko Haram has also
extended a deadly insurgency into parts
of the country’s centre in addition to its
attacks in the north, further complicating
the situation.— AFP