Ugandan women fight for abducted children
Ugandan women concerned about the rampant abduction of children by rebel forces have begun forming peace groups in an attempt to get the abducted children back.
“We go from door to door asking parents whose children are fighting in the bush to go look for them and persuade them to come back home. Although the number of children out there is large, about 50 have returned so far,” says Rosemary Nyeko, a member of one such movement called the Gulu Women Movement for Peace (GWMP). GWMP offers counseling to children who return from fighting.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) has been fighting the Ugandan government since 1986. Under their leader Joseph Kony, rebels have been kidnapping young children and forcing them to fight. The children are commonly raped, tortured, murdered, forced to kill others, and endure other atrocities.
Thirty Ugandan women met Sept. 21 to mark the International Day of Peace and to chart out ways of bringing peace to war-ravaged regions of their country. The women, the majority of them from war-torn northern Uganda, also attended a four-day peace and reconciliation conference Sept. 16-19 organized by People for Peace in Africa, a pressure group, and Uganda Gender Resource Center. (IPS)

US dominates arms sales to third world
The US retained its dominance of the Third World arms market for the eighth year in a row in 2002, according to the latest in an annual series of reports produced by the Congressional Research Service.
Washington accounted for close to one-half of all new arms transfer agreements concluded during the year, as well as actual arms deliveries.
Altogether, arms sales from all sources to developing countries made up about two-thirds of arms sales worldwide during 2002.
New arms agreements with developing nations totaled $17.7 billion, a 10 percent increase over new deals in 2001. Of that total, US sales came to $8.6 billion, or almost 48 percent of all arms transfers to Third World countries, up from 41 percent the previous year. (IPS)

Seven guards of governor killed in attack by Taliban
Taliban fighters killed seven bodyguards of the governor of Helmand, a province in the south of Afghanistan over the weekend in the latest of a series of violent strikes by the resurgent movement, officials said Sept. 28.
Haji Mohammad Ayoub, Helmand’s deputy chief of police, said the Taliban fighters had attacked a military vehicle carrying the soldiers in Sangin district, north-east of Helmand’s capital Lashkargah, on Sept. 27.
He said the governor, Sher Mohammad Akhundzada, was not travelling with them. Five soldiers died instantly and two within a few hours, he added. Haji Muhammad Wali, a spokesman for the governor, said at least 10 guerrillas in two cars staged the attack. They escaped but abandoned one car with a mechanical problem. It was the latest of a series of strikes blamed on the Taliban, who were ousted from power by US-led forces in 2001.
The attack was the second in Helmand in less than a week, after an attack that killed two aid workers on Sept. 24. (Guardian (UK))

Israeli reserve pilots refuse to bomb civilians
Twenty-seven reserve pilots in the Israeli Air Force presented a signed petition Sept. 24 saying that they would not take part in “illegal and immoral” strikes in Palestinian areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The airstrikes, aimed at Hamas militants, sometimes kill Palestinian civilians.
“We refuse to participate in air force attacks on civilian populations,” said the letter, which was sent to the head of the air force, Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz. “We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians.” The petition is similar to a letter signed by hundreds of reserve soldiers who have pledged not to serve in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Most of the pilots who signed the petition have not been on active duty in recent years, the air force said. It was not clear whether any had been involved in the strikes.
Israel calls the strikes “targeted killings.” They have broad support among Israelis, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government saying they are the most effective way to attack terrorists who hide among civilians. (NYT)

Colombian rebels seek ‘solution’ to kidnap of tourists
The rebel National Liberation Army claimed responsibility Sept. 29 for kidnapping eight foreign backpackers from an archaeological site in northern Colombia.
The group, known as the ELN, did not make any demands in its statement and said it was open to negotiations “to find a solution.” But with hundreds of Colombian troops searching for the tourists, the group warned that President Alvaro Uribe would be to blame if the hostages were harmed,
Four Israelis, two Britons, a German and a Spaniard were taken at gunpoint from the Lost City ruins in the Sierra Madre Mountains on Sept. 12.
The rebels said the kidnapping was timed to mark the 30th anniversary of the coup in Chile that overthrew the government of Salvadore Allende, a Marxist. They claimed the “ultra-right forces” who killed Allende were still in power, represented in part by leaders of the hostages’ home countries. (Independent (UK))

Half of Britons think Blair should quit
As the prime minister prepared for a difficult annual conference of his ruling Labor party, a new poll released showed that half the British public believe Tony Blair should resign.
In the Mori survey for the Financial Times business daily released Sept. 27, people were asked whether they agreed with the statement that “it’s now time for Tony Blair to resign and hand over to someone else.”
Fifty percent said they agreed, 39 percent said they disagreed, and 11 percent said they did not know.
Some 64 percent said they were dissatisfied with Blair’s performance, an all-time high, according to the FT, which said the results illustrated the extent to which he had lost public trust as a result of the Iraq war.
The failure of international inspectors to find weapons of mass destruction following the conflict and the suicide of British weapons expert David Kelly in July have plunged Blair into the worst crisis of his six-year tenure. (AFP)

Mbai murder: police to be probed
The Nairobi government on Sept. 28 denied it was covering up the murder of university lecturer Odhiambo Mbai.
In a statement, National Security Minister Chris Murungaru ordered police to take action against investigators who may have leaked to a section of the media statements recorded by some of the suspects.
He said the leakage of the statements was not only a gross breach of the law and standard procedure, it was also aimed at influencing other investigators and diverting them from the truth.
The search for Dr. Mbai’s killers has been dogged by disagreements among the police investigators. Unconfirmed reports say while there are those who are convinced there is a political motive for the murder, others are following lines of investigation that would indicate that the motive for the death was a robbery gone wrong.
Dr. Mbai, the head of the technical committee on devolution at the national constitutional conference, was shot dead on Sept. 14 when gunmen stormed his house. The shooting caused an uproar amid allegations that it was an assassination aimed at derailing the constitutional conference.
Dr. Mbai was the chairman of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of Nairobi. (The Nation (Nairobi))

Gas privatization plan sends Bolivians to the streets
In Bolivia, nearly 100,000 protesters have effectively shut down La Paz and five other cities across the country over the past six days since Sept. 27. Demonstrators have used a series of strikes, marches and roadblocks. On Sept. 20, 7 were killed in a clash between protestors and troops at roadblocks 45 miles north of La Paz.
“We already sold our railways, our airline, our oil [and] our electricity, and the government said that privatization would make us all better off for it,” said Reynaldo Perdello, a retired 63-year-old brewery worker. “Well, maybe they’re better off, but the rest of us are out of work and hungry.”
President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada wants to privatize the country’s gas utility and sell its product abroad, principally to the United States and Mexico. Under the plan, Bolivia, Latin America’s poorest country and holder of the continent’s second largest reserves of natural gas, would turn over the entire operation to a private firm in return for royalties ranging from 18 percent to 50 percent of all exploration. Getting the gas to market would require building a pipeline and a coastal terminal in Peru or Chile.
Sanchez de Lozabda, who took office in August 2002, is a millionaire businessman appointed by the country’s Congress. In his first six months in office, riots erupted when striking police officers joined stone-throwing youths in storming the presidential palace to protest proposed spending cuts and income taxes. Sanchez de Lozada called in troops, and 27 people were killed.
The country’s indigenous population, who make up approximately 60% of Bolivia’s population is the engine behind growing resistance. One quarter of seats in Congress are held by Bolivians who speak native languages.
“We have come to understand just how indifferent the white political class is to our suffering. We have to take control of our country again if anything is going to change,” said Felipe Guispe, an organizer for the Movement to Socialism. (Washington Post)

Houston exec gets top Iraq energy post
Houston’s Robert E. McKee III, a former ConocoPhillips executive, has been appointed the new senior adviser to the Iraqi Oil Ministry.
He will replace Philip J. Carroll, the one-time head of Shell Oil Co. who has overseen the often tumultuous effort to jump-start Iraq’s oil sector for less than five months.
His selection as the Bush administration’s energy czar in Iraq is already drawing fire from Capitol Hill because of his ties to the prime contractor in the Iraqi oil fields, Houston-based Halliburton Co. He’s the chairman of a venture partitioned by the giant Houston oil well service and engineering firm.
The Coalition Provisional Authority, in a brief statement released from Baghdad Monday, said McKee would take over as senior adviser next month.
He will report to L. Paul Bremer, the civil administrator of occupied Iraq, and serve as the liaison with Iraq’s newly reconstituted oil companies. (Washington Post)

New Bissau PM ‘rejected’
Political parties in Guinea Bissau rejected the man chosen by military leaders to head a transitional government following the coup earlier this month. Fifteen of the 17 parties consulted by the military rejected the former interior minister, Antonio Artur Sanha, saying it had previously been agreed that the new prime minister should not belong to a political party.
An adviser to General Verissimo Correia Seabra, who led the coup, had earlier warned all parties that the names of ministers agreed upon by the military amounted to a decision, not a proposal.
Observers say a faction inside the military junta pressured General Seabra to give up the idea of retaining the presidency by telling him that he could not be president and armed forces chief-of-staff at the same time. The general reportedly decided to hold on to his military post after realizing his position would be weakened if he became president.
The presidents of Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal held talks with the coup leaders on 19 September and urged them to set up a team of technocrats to serve as a non-partisan national unity government until new elections can be held.
President Obasanjo said Africa would not recognize a government made up of soldiers. (BBC)