BURUNDI :
Burundi has
talks to form reconciliation body
April 01 2006 - Sapa-AFP
Bujumbura - Burundi has concluded a first round of talks to form a Truth and
Reconciliation Committee (TRC) and a special court with a United Nations
team as part of plans aimed at pacifying the tiny central African nation
ravaged by more than a decade of civil war.
According to a statement released Saturday, the officials discussed the
formation of a judicial panel, procedures of holding consultation with the
people, amnesty as well as the establishment, jurisdiction, function and
financing of the TRC.
"These discussions were to make the first contact between us," said
Jean-Polydor Ndayirorere, an official in Burundi's first deputy president's
office who led the government side.
The United Nations delegation, led by Nicholas Michel, the world body's
deputy secretary in charge of judicial affairs, said Burundi has to abolish
the death penalty, recognise genocide and war crimes, crimes against
humanity and independence of the special court as critical considerations in
talks to form the TRC.
The TRC will be charged with the responsibility of finding suspects involved
in the country's inter-ethnic massacres since independence from Belgium in
1962, while the special court will try crime suspects from 1972.
The week-long talks in the Burundi capital Bujumbura ended late Friday.
Burundi is emerging from more than a decade of an ethnically driven civil
conflict that has claimed about 300 000 lives since it began in 1993 with
the assassination of the country's first democratically elected president, a
member of the Hutu majority, by elements of the Tutsi-minority dominated
military.
RWANDA
UGANDA
TANZANIE:
CONGO RDC
:
KENYA :
ANGOLA :
AFRIQUE DU SUD :
AFRIQUE
/ U A :
Nile basin countries set up commission to resolve water dispute
www.chinaview.cn 2006-04-02
ADDIS ABABA, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Nine riparian countries on Saturday agreed
to set up a permanent commission to coordinate the use of transboundary
water resource from the Nile River basin.
The Nile River Basin Commission, which will act as an executive body on
behalf of member states, will be based in Kampala, capital of Uganda, said
an agreement reached here at the end of a two-day extraordinary meeting of
the Nile council of ministers.
The agreement, known as the Nile River basin agreement, was signed by water
ministers of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia,
Kenya, Rwanda, Republic of Congo, Sudan and Tanzania after years of tough
negotiations.
Any issue concerning the use of the Nile, including lakes of the riparian
countries, will from now be based on the new agreement, it said.
During the two-day meeting, the ministers underscored cooperation as a key
factor in resolving any contentious issue on the use of transboundary water
resource.
Eritrea was the only Nile riparian country who was absent at the council's
meeting. Enditem
Editor: Luan Shanglin
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