Doctors Without Borders workers abducted in Darfur

By Sarah El Deeb – Associated Press

AP – A worker walks into the offices of the Belgian branch of the aid group ‘Doctors Without Borders’ known …

KHARTOUM, Sudan – Armed men abducted three international aid workers and two Sudanese guards in Darfur, a week after the government in Khartoum ordered aid groups expelled in response to an international arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, officials said Thursday.

The kidnappings — believed to be the first of Westerners in Darfur — took place late Wednesday in a rural area known as Saraf Umra about 125 miles west of the city of El Fasher, said Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Khartoum.

The area is government controlled, and pro-government Arab militias known as janjaweed live and are based nearby.

The attackers stormed into the compound of the Belgian branch of the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the evening and abducted the staffers, said Susan Sandars, a Nairobi, Kenya-based spokeswoman for the group, which is also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF.

The two Sudanese guards were later released, but a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor and a French coordinator were still being held, she said, adding there was no information on the motive or the whereabouts of the kidnapped. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction.

The kidnappings come after Sudan expelled the 13 biggest aid groups from Darfur in response to the March 4 arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 6-year-old war in the region.

Many fear the warrant would make the foreign community in Sudan a target for anger and revenge attacks.

The French and Dutch branches of MSF were among the 13 groups expelled from Darfur. Its Belgian, Swiss and Spanish branches, however, were allowed to remain, along with dozens of other smaller aid organization. MSF, which has five branches, had an extensive medical operation in Darfur and was often the only health provider in violence-stricken or rebel held areas.

Later Thursday, Christopher Stokes, director of MSF Belgium, said in Brussels that MSF decided to pull all its remaining staff from Darfur to Khartoum as a safety precaution until those abducted are freed.

“We are trying to negotiate for the moment the release of our colleagues,” Stokes said. “The only people that will stay behind are the people dealing with trying to secure the freedom of our colleagues. The remaining … MSF Belgium, Switzerland and Spain … also decided to withdraw their teams.”

The 13 expelled aid groups have all pulled out of the large western region of Sudan, although some stayed on in Khartoum. They represented about 40 percent of the humanitarian personnel in Darfur.

Authorities claimed the groups were cooperating with the ICC tribunal. Sudanese officials have warned that vigilantes could target foreigners, though they promised to try to protect them.

Hassabo Abdel-Rahman, of the government humanitarian affairs office said the three abducted workers were able to call their MSF colleagues after the kidnapping to assure they were in good health.

He said the two Sudanese guards who were released have been questioned by police but could not identify their kidnappers. “It’s an isolated and immoral act,” Abdel-Rahman said, claiming an unknown group was behind the abduction.

The ICC warrant accuses al-Bashir of orchestrating atrocities against civilians in Darfur, where his Arab-led government has been battling ethnic African rebels since 2003. Up to 300,000 people have been killed, and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

Most of those who have fled the fighting rely on U.N. agencies and international aid groups for their survival and the expulsion of the aid groups also raises fears of a humanitarian disaster.

MSF Belgium said on its Web site that the families of the kidnapped have been informed. “Doctors Without Borders is seriously concerned over their safety and is doing all that is possible to secure their safe release,” it said.

Sergio Cecchini of MSF in Rome said the group was not aware of any ransom requests and said he had no information of who was behind the kidnapping.

Aid workers or convoys are frequently attacked in Darfur by armed bandits from any of the multiple armed forces fighting in Darfur. Usually, aid workers are let go after their equipment is stolen, but some have been killed.

In February, two Sudanese working for the French Aide Medicale Internationale were killed by bandits. In 2006, a Sudanese working for Oxfam was kidnapped in the same area where the Wednesday kidnapping took place, and remained missing for at least 2 months, forcing Oxfam to shut down its offices there. The Sudanese was killed shortly after his release, when he got caught up in fighting while trying to get back to Saraf Umra.

The increased banditry has forced many aid workers to travel only by helicopters to avoid high-risk roads.

Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Ali Youssef said Sudan condemned the abductions.

“We are following this, we don’t have clues,” he said, dismissing the possibility that the aid workers were detained by authorities. “Why should we detain them? If the government of Sudan was responsible … we would say so, say that they are under investigation.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini requested the cooperation of Sudanese authorities and stressed in a statement that hostage safety must be the absolute priority and that “therefore no action must be put in place that might compromise that.”

___

Associated Press Writer Constant Brand in Brussels contributed to this report.

African leaders should support al-Bashir arrest, says Tutu

NEW YORK, UNITED STATES Mar 03 2009 13:21

African leaders should support a bid to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on war-crimes charges, Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote in a New York Times editorial on Tuesday.

The retired archbishop said it was “shameful” that so many African leaders have rallied around al-Bashir, who faces a possible arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on Wednesday over alleged war crimes in Darfur.

If the warrant is granted and an arrest carried out, al-Bashir would become the first sitting head of state to be hauled before the ICC since the court opened in 2002.

“Because the victims in Sudan are African, African leaders should be the staunchest supporters of efforts to see perpetrators brought to account,” wrote Tutu.

“Yet rather than stand by those who have suffered in Darfur, African leaders have so far rallied behind the man responsible for turning that corner of Africa into a graveyard.”

Tutu chastised the African Union for calling on the United Nations Security Council to suspend the court’s proceedings.

“I regret that the charges against President al-Bashir are being used to stir up the sentiment that the justice system — and in particular, the international court — is biased against Africa. Justice is in the interest of victims, and the victims of these crimes are African.

“To imply that the prosecution is a plot by the West is demeaning to Africans and understates the commitment to justice we have seen across the continent.”

An arrest warrant for al-Bashir “would be an extraordinary moment for the people of Sudan”, Tutu wrote.

“African leaders should support this historic occasion, not work to subvert it.” — AFP

Africa celebrates Obama victory with pride, hope

By ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

NAIROBI, Kenya — For many across Africa and the world, Barack Obama’s election seals America’s reputation as a land of staggering opportunity.

“If it were possible for me to get to the United States on my bicycle, I would,” said Joseph Ochieng, a 36-year-old carpenter who lives in Kenya’s sprawling Kibera shantytown, a maze of tin-roofed shacks and dirt roads.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki declared a public holiday Thursday in the country of Obama’s late father, allowing celebrations to continue through the night and into a second day. From Europe and Asia to the Middle East, many expressed amazement that the U.S. could overcome centuries of racial strife and elect an African-American president.

Scenes of jubilation broke out in the western Kenya village of Kogelo, where many of Obama’s Kenyan relatives still live. People sang, danced in the streets and wrapped themselves in U.S. flags. A group of exuberant residents picked up the president-elect’s half brother Malik and carried him through the village.

“Unbelievable!” Malik Obama shouted, leading the family in chanting, “Obama’s coming, make way!”

“He’s in!” said Rachel Ndimu, 23, a Kenyan business student who joined hundreds of others for an election party that began at 5 a.m. Wednesday at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger.

Obama was born in Hawaii, where he spent most of his childhood raised by his white mother. He barely knew his father. But for the world’s poorest continent, the ascent of a man of African heritage to America’s highest office was a source of immeasurable pride and hope.

Tributes rolled in from two of Africa’s groundbreaking leaders. Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, said Obama gave the world the courage to dream.

“Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place,” Mandela said in a letter of congratulations.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf — the first woman elected to head an African country — said she did not expect to see a black American president in her lifetime.

“All Africans now know that if you persevere, all things are possible,” she said.

In Britain, The Sun newspaper borrowed from Neil Armstrong’s 1969 moon landing in describing Obama’s election as “one giant leap for mankind.”

Yet celebrations were often tempered by sobering concerns that Obama faces momentous global challenges — wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the nuclear ambitions of Iran, the elusive hunt for peace in the Middle East and a financial crisis.

Europe, where Obama is overwhelmingly popular, is one region that looked eagerly to an Obama administration for a revival in warm relations after the Bush government’s chilly rift with the continent over the Iraq war.

“At a time when we have to confront immense challenges together, your election raises great hopes in France, in Europe and in the rest of the world,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a letter to Obama.

Obama’s victory also was greeted with cheers in Mexico, where former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda wrote in the Reforma newspaper that the presidency represents a chance for Mexico to remake its relationship with the United States.

“Obama’s win … opens to Mexico an extraordinary opportunity to reposition itself in the world because it will be infinitely easier to be a neighbor, ally and friend of the United States with Obama,” he wrote.

Americans living abroad, too, basked in the glow of a victory hoped for by most of the world.

“I’m proud of being an American today,” said Jody Suden, a mother of two in London. “It’s such a shift from the way things have been.”

This report includes information from Cox News Service.

Sudan rebels wanted over peacekeepers’ deaths

(AP) — The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court at The Hague on Thursday requested arrest warrants for rebel leaders allegedly responsible for attacks last year on peacekeepers in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The ICC has already charged Sudan President Omar al-Bashir with war crimes in Darfur.

They are the first warrants ever requested for the killing of peacekeepers, an ICC spokeswoman said. Such an act constitutes a war crime.

“I will not let such attacks go unpunished,” ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Thursday.

The attacks happened in September 2007 when a thousand rebel-led soldiers surrounded and stormed an African Union peacekeeping base in Haskanita, in southern Darfur, the ICC said. Twelve peacekeepers were killed and eight were wounded in the overnight attack, the deadliest single attack on AU peacekeepers since they began their mission in late 2004.

Moreno-Ocampo determined there were reasonable grounds to believe that rebel commanders bore criminal responsibility for the attacks. The warrants cover three counts of alleged war crimes for murder, intentionally directing attacks on personnel and objects involved in a peacekeeping mission, and pillaging.

“They planned, led their troops and directed the attack which killed 12 peacekeepers, severely wounded eight others, and completely destroyed [African Union] facilities and property, directly affecting aid and security for millions of people of Darfur who are in need of protection,” the prosecutor said.

It was unclear when the judges might decide on the arrest warrant request. ICC spokeswoman Florence Olara said there was no set deadline for them to go through the evidence and make a ruling.

In July, Ocampo asked for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to be indicted on war crimes charges in Darfur. Sudan does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction nor does the United States.

Human Rights Watch praised the prosecutor’s request for the warrants, calling it “an important step toward protecting those who protect civilians.”

“Civilians rely on peacekeepers for protection, and any hope for restoring security for civilians in Darfur depends on peacekeepers being able to do their job,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch. “These warrant requests send a strong message that such crimes will not be tolerated.”

The attack on the AU peacekeepers came months before the 7,000-strong force was replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force of 26,000 troops.

The U.N. force, known as UNAMID, is a joint operation between the United Nations and the African Union. It took over formally at the end of 2007.

The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 after rebels in the western region of Sudan began attacking government positions. Sudan’s government responded with a fierce military campaign that has led to some 200,000 deaths and forced 2 million people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.

Rice arrives in Libya on historic visit

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee, Associated Press Writer 43 mins ago

TRIPOLI, Libya – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that her historic visit to former pariah state Libya proves that the U.S. never writes off another nation forever.

Rice is the highest-ranking American official to visit the North African country in more than a half-century. She will meet over dinner with mercurial leader Moammar Gadhafi, whom President Reagan once called a “mad dog” and other U.S. leaders have called a terrorist.

“There is a long way to go but I do believe that this demonstrates that the United States doesn’t have permanent enemies,” Rice said as she flew to the capital. She said she had not expected she would ever go to Libya.

Rice was welcomed with a modest ceremony at the airport and was meeting with Libya’s foreign minister before the highlight of the brief visit — dinner with Gadhafi. He invited her for the evening meal that breaks the day’s fast observed during the holy month of Ramadan, and although details were sketchy ahead of time, U.S. officials said they expected Rice would dine in a traditional, desert-style tent.

“I look forward to hearing the leader’s world view,” Rice told reporters.

Gadhafi is expected to be surrounded by an all-female bodyguard corps.

Rice is the first secretary of state to visit Libya since John Foster Dulles in 1953 and the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since then-Vice President Richard Nixon in 1957.

Gadhafi has sought the visit to culminate five years of halting but steadily improving ties that began when Libya abandoned weapons of mass destruction and renounced terrorism in 2003.

Libya has since agreed to pay compensation to the families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, and those of a 1986 attack on a disco in Berlin, which prompted President Reagan to order retaliatory airstrikes on Libyan targets. The money is not yet all there, but U.S. officials say they are confident it will be paid soon.

“It demonstrates that when countries are prepared to make strategic changes in direction the United States is prepared to respond,” Rice said. “It’s a beginning, it’s an opening. It’s not, I think, the end of the story.”

Rice was spending only a few hours in Tripoli, an ancient city fronting the Mediterranean sea and backing to the north African desert. There were few signs in the capital that Libyans or their government saw the day as particularly significant. Unlike in some capitals, there were no banners along her motorcade route or crowds lined up to gawk.

Rice was visiting the offices that serve as the U.S. embassy in Libya. Plans to send a full-fledged ambassador are hung up in Congress over concern that Libya has not fulfilled all its promises to compensate terror victims.

“No one can ever salve the wounds of the families,” victimized by terror attacks, Rice said. “That is why we have looked so hard for justice to be brought and a means of compensation.”

U.S. officials had hoped that Libya would have deposited hundreds of millions of dollars into the compensation fund by the time Rice arrived. But the State Department said Thursday that the account remained empty.

Some of the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have raised vehement objections to Rice meeting with Gadhafi, whom they consider to be unrepentant for the deaths of the 280 people, including 180 Americans.

The Bush administration has expressed sympathy with the families but said it is time to move ahead with Libya, which is the first, and thus far only, country designated by the State Department to be a “state sponsor of terrorism” to be removed from that list through its own actions.

Rice’s visit comes amid a surge in interest from U.S. companies, particularly in the energy sector, to do business in Libya, where European companies have had much greater access in recent years. Libya’s proven oil reserves are the ninth largest in the world, close to 39 billion barrels, and vast areas remain unexplored for new deposits.

“Reliable sources of energy supply, multiple sources of energy, diversification of energy supply is an important element of economic development for the entire international economy,” Rice said, but not the focus of the U.S. opening to Libya. “The relationship has much broader potential than just energy.”

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday in Washington that the Bush administration hopes to be able to announce a new ambassador there soon.

“We have had a long and bad history with Libya,” she said. “That began to turn around when they turned away from nuclear weapons and terrorism. That country has radically changed its behavior and Secretary Rice’s trip signifies a new chapter in U.S.-Libya bilateral relations.”

Relations between the countries are still strained on a number of fronts, ranging from human rights issues to the final resolution of legal claims from the terror bombings.

A leading Libyan reformer, Fathi al-Jhami, whose case has been championed by the Bush administration and by Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden, remained in detention, where he has been near continuously since 2002. Rights groups say hundreds of other political prisoners are still being held.

Rice said she would raise the dissident’s case with Libyan officials and wanted to see his release.

Libya, now an elected member of the U.N. Security Council, has voted with the U.S. on issues related to Iran’s nuclear program and has helped with the Darfur crisis. But its support on other key issues, notably the Middle East peace process, is far from clear.

Among the biggest question marks is the often unpredictable behavior of the sunglasses-clad Gadhafi, who has cultivated images as both an Arab potentate and African monarch since taking power in a 1969 coup.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera television last year, Gadhafi spoke of Rice in most unusual terms, calling her “Leezza” and suggesting that she actually runs the Arab world with which he has had severe differences in the past.

“I support my darling black African woman,” he said. “I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders … Leezza, Leezza, Leezza. … I love her very much. I admire her, and I’m proud of her, because she’s a black woman of African origin.”

(This version CORRECTS the year of the Pan Am 103 bombing to 1988.)

Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.