Mugabe hits out at 'hypocrite' Bush


Bush was attacked for calling Mugabe "tyrannical" and some other governments "brutal regimes" [EPA]
Attacks against the US president have dominated speeches by world leaders for the third straight day at the UN General Assembly. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, led the lambasting on Wednesday, saying George Bush, with Iraqi blood on his hands, had "much to atone for and little to lecture us on".
Mugabe, 83, himself accused of extensive human rights abuses since coming to power in 1980, accused Bush of "rank hypocrisy" for lecturing him on human rights. His comments came a day after Bush described the governments of Belarus, Syria, Iran and North Korea as "brutal regimes", and criticised Mugabe's government as "tyrannical". "[Bush] kills in Iraq. He kills in Afghanistan. And this is supposed to be our master on human rights?"
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe president "His hands drip with innocent blood of many nationalities," Mugabe said in a typically fiery speech in New York. "He kills in Iraq; he kills in Afghanistan. And this is supposed to be our master on human rights?" Mugabe, blamed for causing food shortages, soaring unemployment and hyperinflation in his country of 6,500 per cent, has accused Western countries of sabotaging the economy. He said the US was "primarily responsible for rewriting core tenets of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights", adding: "We seem all guilty for 9/11." Cuba also took exception to Bush's speech where he called for an end to a "cruel dictatorship" and prompted the country's delegation to leave the room. Felipe Perez Roque, Cuba's foreign minister, described Bush's talk of democracy as a lie, saying he came into office "through fraud and deceit". "We would have been spared his presence yesterday and would have listened to president Al Gore talking about climate change and the risks to our species," he said. 'Industry of death' Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, under pressure to show progress on resolving sectarian violence, sought international help by outlining the concerns and hopes of the Iraqi people. But his claims that Iraqi forces "with loyalty to country, not sect nor ethnicity" were "ready to assume full responsibility for our security in order to defend the democratic gains" were met with scepticism. On the same day, the Pentagon told congress it was ready to sell Iraq up to $2.3bn in weapons to help the Iraqi army expand and take over missions now carried out by US and allied forces. The US defence secretary also asked congress to approve nearly $190bn more in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - only $1bn of which was to be spent on training and equipping Iraqi security forces. Denouncing war in his speech, Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, accused some countries of perpetrating death by being in the arms race. "Some countries are in an arms race, I don't understand that. We are talking about social movement; we are talking about a new constitution in Bolivia that renounces war. "I'm convinced that war is the industry of death, and therefore the arms race is one more industry that goes together with that industry of death."

Tentative Deal Reached for Darfur Peacekeeping Force

By WARREN HOGEPublished: June 7, 2007UNITED NATIONS, June 6

The United Nations and the African Union struck a tentative deal on Wednesday to end disagreement over the command of a 23,000-soldier joint peacekeeping force proposed for Darfur.
The disagreement arose last week and threatened an accord between the organizations on the details of the peacekeeping force, which is meant to help end the violence that has killed some 200,000 people and driven from their homes 2.5 million others in Darfur, a region of Sudan.
The original accord, which had been endorsed by the Security Council, gave clear ultimate command to the United Nations. But the African Union raised objections and asked for “clarifications” in the text.
The new language, in a revised version delivered to the Security Council and the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, eliminates the reference and leaves vague how power will be divided.
A senior United Nations official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity said the indeterminate phrasing was aimed at satisfying the Security Council that there was enough United Nations leadership to persuade troop-contributing countries to provide the necessary soldiers and equipment, and to convince the African Union and Sudan that there was enough African input at the top.
Under the revision, he said, the African Union would have “operational” authority and the United Nations “overall” authority. He explained that this meant that an African Union commander would make decisions on the ground and that the United Nations would step in only if it disagreed with his decision.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has declared the crisis in Darfur his international priority, and ambassadors from the 15 Security Council countries will visit Sudan this month.
Getting the force into Darfur has been delayed for months by the Sudanese government’s unwillingness to keep to an earlier promise to let United Nations peacekeepers in.
The revised document must now go before the African Union’s Peace and Security Council and the Sudanese government for approval, and the timetable is a rushed one.
Under the schedule, the Sudanese are expected to discuss the agreement on Monday and Tuesday in Khartoum and give their response in time for the Security Council to discuss it in New York on Wednesday.
The next day the Security Council ambassadors leave on an African trip that will place them in Khartoum on June 17. They will also visit Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Congo.
Deployment of the joint force is the third stage of a United Nations-African Union plan to bolster and eventually replace the existing 7,000-member African Union force that has been overwhelmed by the scale of the conflict in Darfur.
The second stage, known as the “heavy support package” and now under consideration, calls for sending 3,000 military police officers and six attack helicopters and other aviation and logistics support. The official said he hoped that this stage would be complete by the end of the year and that the joint force could be deployed in the first half of 2008.

Nigeria: Shell Loses 120,000bpd to Fresh Attack On Pipeline

Posted to the web 16 May 2007
Chika Amanze-NwachukuLagos

An attack at a flow station linked to the Bonny export terminal in southern Nigeria has caused Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to cut 170,000 barrels per day output as violence escalates in the Niger Delta region.
Consequently, Shell is expected to declare a force majeure on oil exports from the terminal today, implying that the company is unable to meet contractual terms with buyers.
"There was an attack at a flow station. The force majeure will be out today," a sources told THISDAY yesterday, adding, "We have shut in about 170,000 bpd of oil production".
The attack is the latest in a string of militant actions against Nigerian oil production facilities.
Production of Bonny Light, a Nigerian benchmark grade, was expected to average around 308,065 b/earlier in May, according to the export loading programme.
Meanwhile, the continued threat posed by the seemingly unending crisis in the Niger Delta to crude oil production in the country, has been further heightened after US-based drilling company Hercules Offshore Inc. said it was evacuating all its nonessential expatriate workers from Nigeria.
Hercules which operates lifeboats services for offshore operations in the oil sector would be the second major US company to suspend operations in the region in the last one week, coming on the heels of Chevron Nigeria Limited decision to evacuate all non-essential workers from the area.