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: SENEGAL: As police crack down on illegal migrants, Spain takes diplomatic action
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©Julie Vandal/IRIN
Fishermen arrive in Dakar
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DAKAR, 31 May 2006 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS) - As the Senegalese authorities crack down against illegal migrants, destination country Spain has launched a high-profile diplomatic offensive to bolster cooperation with West African leaders.
“The only future for illegal migration is return - the alternative is death by drowning,” Spain’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Bernardino Leon said on Wednesday. “Our two governments share the same humanitarian concerns.”
Speaking to reporters after meeting Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade, the minister said Spain had agreed to help Senegal to try to keep its people at home by funding a scheme to encourage 10,000 young people to return to the countryside to take up farming.
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Posted by admin on Wednesday, May 31 @ 16:12:45 EDT (1257 reads)
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: GHANA: Chieftaincy tussle brews conflict in northern town
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©
Bimbilla lies 100km south east of Tamale, close to the border with Togo
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ACCRA, 31 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - Police and soldiers are maintaining a dusk to dawn curfew for a fourth week in the northern Ghanaian town of Bimbilla after a long running chieftaincy dispute erupted in violence, said local officials.
“There is still an uneasy calm in the area. The curfew will be reviewed depending on the security situation in the area to ensure that no one starts any trouble under the cover of darkness,” top local government official, Salifu Sa’eed, told IRIN.
“The situation will remain fragile until a substantive person is chosen to occupy the vacant throne,” he warned. The throne has been vacant since the death of chief Na Abarika three years ago.
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Posted by admin on Wednesday, February 01 @ 07:52:41 EST (2094 reads)
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: COTE D IVOIRE: Annan wants more peacekeepers on ground
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© UNOCI Photo
UN peacekeepers at the capital Yamoussoukro
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DAKAR, 5 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - The UN peacekeeping force in Cote d'Ivoire is overstretched and needs thousands of reinforcements as long-delayed elections near, and there remains "the possibility that another major violent crisis might occur", Secretary-General Kofi Annan said.
In his latest report on the divided West African nation, Annan recommended that an extra 3,400 soldiers and 475 policemen be sent in, boosting the peacekeeping force by some 50 percent.
Currently almost 6,900 blue-hats officers, alongside 4,000 peacekeepers from former colonial power France, patrol the buffer zone which cuts a swath between the government-run south and the rebel-held north. And around 700 police officers help keep the peace in urban areas and train local officers.
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Posted by admin on Thursday, January 05 @ 12:24:02 EST (821 reads)
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: WEST AFRICA: 12 nations band together to fight off H5N1 threat
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© Pierre Holtz/IRIN
Chicken farm in Senegal
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DAKAR, 23 Feb 2006 (IRIN) - Twelve West African nations on Thursday pledged to work together to fight the deadly H5N1 virus and called on the international community to back a joint emergency fund dedicated to the battle against bird flu.
In a statement issued after two days of talks in the Senegalese capital, the group of nations - two of them bordering Nigeria, the only bird-flu-hit country in Africa to date - agreed on “the need for a concerted and coordinated approach in setting up national campaigns” against the virus.
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Posted by admin on Thursday, February 23 @ 10:09:25 EST (2918 reads)
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: Opposition leader returns, calls for peace, as UN mulls sanctions
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© Abidjan Post
Former prime minister Alassane Ouattara
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ABIDJAN, 26 Jan 2006 (IRIN) - Opposition leader Alassane Ouattara has returned to Cote d’Ivoire after three years of self-imposed exile, calling for peace as the United Nations mulls sanctions against leaders seen as blocking peace efforts.
"I would like to issue a call for union, for appeasement, and say that it's with much love that I'm returning to my country to participate in the political process, in reconciliation," Outtara said on arrival on Wednesday evening before driving off under the watchful eye of UN peacekeepers..
The leader of the opposition Rally of the Republicans (RDR) party, and a former prime minister, fled the country with the help of French special forces after unidentified assailants torched his house at the outbreak of civil war in 2002.
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Posted by admin on Thursday, January 26 @ 09:47:06 EST (850 reads)
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