Category: General

ALGIERS— Algeria announced suspension of the Treaty of Friendship, Good-neighborliness and Cooperation signed with Spain 20 years ago to protest the country’s shift in position on Western Sahara, official APS news agency reported, citing a presidential statement.

The announcement came hours after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez reportedly said his government’s policy shift on Western Sahara has “improved (Spain’s) bilateral relations with Morocco.”

In March, the Spanish government shifted its long-standing position on Western Sahara by endorsing Morocco’s autonomy plan for the territory, paving the way for easing diplomatic tensions between the two kingdoms.

The new Spanish position “violates international legitimacy, and directly contributes to the deterioration of the situation in Western Sahara and the region as a whole,” the presidential statement said.

The friendship treaty agreed on Oct. 8, 2002 with Spain has framed the development of bilateral relations between Algiers and Madrid, it noted.

Western Sahara is claimed by Morocco, but the Algeria-based Polisario Front movement has been fighting for its independence.

Algeria recalled its ambassador to Spain in March after the position shift of the Spanish government on Western Sahara.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Senegalese President and African Union Chair Macky Sall on Thursday urged Ukraine to demine waters around its Odesa port to ease much needed grain exports from the war-torn country.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions have disrupted grain deliveries from the two countries, fueling fears of hunger around the world.

Cereal prices in Africa, the world’s poorest continent, have surged because of the slump in exports, sharpening the impact of conflict and climate change and sparking fears of social unrest.

If wheat exports do not resume from Ukraine, Africa “will be in a situation of very serious famine that could destabilize the continent,” Sall told French media outlets France 24 and RFI.

Russia and Ukraine produce 30% of the global wheat supply.

But grain remains stuck in Ukraine’s ports because of a Russian blockade and Ukrainian mines, while Western sanctions on Moscow have disrupted exports from Russia.

Moscow has called for Ukraine to demine the waters surrounding the Ukrainian-controlled port of Odesa to allow out blocked grain, but Kyiv has refused for fear of a Russian attack.

Sall said Russia President Vladimir Putin, whom he met last week in Russia, had assured him this would not happen.

“I even told him: ‘The Ukrainians said that if they demine, you’ll enter the port.’ He says, no, he will not enter, and that’s a commitment he made,” the Senegalese leader said.

“There must now be work towards getting the demining done, the United Nations involved … so that we can start getting the Ukrainian wheat out,” he said.

Sall is to meet French President Emmanuel Macron in France on Friday.

He is expected to ask him to help lift EU sanctions against Russia, especially to reverse its exclusion from the global SWIFT bank messaging system.

“Since our banks are mostly linked to European banks, they cannot pay as they used to” for Russian products, the AU chair explained.

Source: Voice of America

Algeria has suspended a two-decade-old friendship treaty with Spain.

Relations between Algeria and Spain have deteriorated since March, when Madrid openly backed Morocco’s plan to grant autonomy to Western Sahara, which Rabat annexed in 1975 when Spanish forces withdrew from the region.

Algiers supports the region’s Polisario independence movement, which has led to steadily worsening ties between the neighboring North African countries.

Under the friendship treaty signed in 2002, Algeria and Spain agreed to cooperate on controlling the flow of migration and fight against human trafficking.

Spain’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it regretted Algeria’s decision but remained committed to upholding the principle of the treaty.

The growing tensions between Algeria and Spain could also further complicate Algeria’s role as a key supplier of natural gas to Spain. Algiers stopped pumping gas to Spain through a pipeline that passes through Morocco last year.

Source: Voice of America

The United Nations warned Tuesday that Somalia is at risk of another famine, as consecutive droughts have withered crops and killed scores of livestock, and grain imports from Ukraine and Russia have dramatically dropped due to their war.

“Somalia is certainly heading toward a famine, if action is not taken now,” U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Adam Abdelmoula told reporters in a video call from Mogadishu.

He said if the international community waits until a formal declaration of famine to act, it will be too late.

“We have been there before — in 2011, severe drought resulted in a famine that killed a-quarter-of-a-million people, partly because we were slow to act. We must not allow that to happen again,” the humanitarian coordinator said.

Abdelmoula said that nearly half the country’s population, about 7.1 million people, are facing crisis-level food insecurity or worse at least through September. He said 213,000 of them would face famine-like conditions. The situation in south and central parts of the country is especially grim.

Somalia has endured four consecutive failed rainy seasons, plunging much of the country into severe drought, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency. Recent moderate rains have not alleviated the crisis.

Complicating the situation is Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Before Moscow’s February 24 invasion of its neighbor, Ukraine provided Somalia with about half of its grain imports, while Russia accounted for 35%.

“Both of those import sources have come to a complete halt,” Abdelmoula said. He added that global supply chain disruptions and increased fuel prices, as a result of the war, have also disproportionately affected Somalia.

“In some parts of the country, food prices have risen by 140% to 160%, leaving poor families hungry and destitute,” he said.

The United Nations appealed for $1.5 billion for its Somalia humanitarian response this year, but with the year half over, it has only received 18% of the funds needed. This has resulted in the shuttering of hundreds of U.N.-operated feeding centers and health clinics.

Abdelmoula said the World Food Program and partners have decreased food and cash handouts to affected communities by as much as 40% already. And of the 5.1 million people they had been trying to assist, they have only been able to reach 2.8 million.

“And the rest were left out,” the humanitarian coordinator said.

The situation is especially dangerous for children under five years old. Suspected cholera cases are on the rise and at least 8,700 cases of measles have been reported. Malnourished children are much more likely to succumb to those diseases.

In 2017, Somalia also faced the prospect of famine, but it was averted by concerted action by both the government and the international community.

Source: Voice of America

Belgium’s King Philippe on Tuesday begins a historic visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a region cruelly exploited by his ancestors, as tensions rise in the volatile east.

The six-day trip, at the invitation of President Felix Tshisekedi, has strong symbolic significance, coming two years after Philippe expressed to the Congolese leader his “deepest regrets” for the “wounds” of colonization.

The visit, the monarch’s first to the DRC since ascending the throne in 2013, has been billed as a chance for reconciliation after the atrocities and other abuses committed under Belgian colonial rule.

The visit had originally been scheduled to take place in June 2020 to mark the DRC’s 60th anniversary of independence but was rescheduled to 2022 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It was then postponed from March to June because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Philippe will be accompanied by his wife, Queen Mathilde, and members of the Belgian government, including Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

Three stops are planned, and the sovereign will deliver a speech at the first two: in Kinshasa on Wednesday during a ceremony with Tshisekedi at the Congolese parliament, then Friday before students at the University of Lubumbashi in the south of the country.

Historians say millions of people in the Belgian Congo were killed, mutilated or died of disease as they worked on rubber plantations belonging to Leopold II, Belgium’s monarch from 1865 to 1909 and the brother of Philippe’s great-great-grandfather.

The growth of Black Lives Matter, initially a reaction to police violence in the United States but now a broader anti-racist movement, has seen several colonial-era statues removed in Belgium.

Belgium is also preparing to return to Kinshasa a tooth — the last remains of Patrice Lumumba — a hero of the anti-colonial struggle and short-lived first prime minister of the independent Congo.

Lumumba was murdered by Congolese separatists and Belgian mercenaries in 1961, and his body was dissolved in acid. The tooth was kept as a trophy by one of his killers, a Belgian police officer.

Philippe’s visit comes 12 years after the last visit of a Belgian sovereign, Albert II, in 2010, and will also aim to reset ties that were soured during the presidency of Joseph Kabila, who left office in 2018.

The latter was criticized, including by Brussels, for having remained in power beyond his second term, in violation of his country’s constitution, and development ties were suspended for a time.

The visit comes in a context of renewed violence in North Kivu, where the DRC accuses neighboring Rwanda of supporting armed rebels opposed to the Congolese authorities.

Belgium has called for an “immediate” halt to the fighting, which is causing civilians to flee.

In this immense country, where the GDP per capita is one of the lowest in the world despite its mineral wealth, the east has been shaken by massacres and violence for nearly 30 years.

After the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda in 1994, some of the perpetrators fled to the DRC, and Kigali’s new authorities launched operations against them.

The royal couple will come to show their solidarity with these battered populations, especially female victims of rape in the region.

The last stop of their journey is scheduled for June 12 in Bukavu, in the clinic of gynecologist Denis Mukwege, co-winner of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against sexual violence.

A stop on Wednesday at the National Museum in Kinshasa will also address the issue of the restitution of art objects to the former colony.

The Belgian government last year began a program to give back artifacts to the DRC.

Source: Voice of America

Two soldiers were killed Monday in fighting against M23 militants in eastern Congo, the DRC army said, the latest violence in a long-standing conflict that has escalated in recent weeks and caused a diplomatic rift with Rwanda.

The rebels shelled an army position in North Kivu, killing two soldiers and injuring five. Congo accuses the neighboring state of supporting the M23, which Rwanda denies.

That clash followed a raid on a village in neighboring Ituri province on Sunday by suspected Islamists from another rebel group that killed at least 18 people, local sources said.

Fighters believed to be from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) killed residents and burned down houses in Otomabere, said a witness, a local chief and a local human rights group.

Congolese army spokesman Jules Ngongo confirmed the ADF attack without giving a death toll, and said Congolese forces were in pursuit of the rebels.

The ADF is a Ugandan militia that moved to eastern Congo in the 1990s and killed more than 1,300 people between January 2021 and January 2022, according to a United Nations report.

“We were chatting with some friends outside (when) we heard gunshots, and everyone fled in a different direction. It was total panic,” said Kimwenza Malembe, a resident of Otomabere.

“This morning we counted 18 dead, killed by knives and firearms.”

Irumu chief Jonas Izorabo Lemi said he had received word of 20 dead.

Christophe Munyanderu, coordinator of the local group Convention for the Respect of Human Rights (CRDH), put the death toll at 27, up from a provisional figure of 20.

Uganda has sent at least 1,700 troops to neighboring Congo to help fight the ADF, and last week the two countries extended a joint operation launched late last year.

Source: Voice of America