Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who assumed the chairmanship of the 53-member Organization of African Unity at its 33rd summit said the new Congo needs help urgently if it is to address the enormous challenges facing it.
Laurent Kabila, leader of Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (Zaire), forced dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to flee into exile last month after he had plundered the wealth of the mineral rich central African state for 32 years.
The Secretary-General of the Pan African Movement (PAM), Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem said there is a possibility Swiss banks have deliberately under-estimated the value of ousted Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's assets in order to protect the West. Abdul-Raheem told guests at a public lecture here on Thursday night that previous estimates traced by an independent journalist exceeded 4.8 billion Swiss francs (3 billion U.S. dollars) worth of assets held by Mobutu.
However, Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent-Desire Kabila has said Mobutu has 11 billion Swiss francs or one billion dollars in foreign banks. The amount exceeds the country's gross domestic product. Meanwhile, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem has said there is need for Africans to build their own democratic institutions instead of relying on the West.
Do not take lessons from these Westerners who act like they were born democratic, he said at the lecture. Democracy is a process that takes time to develop, so Africa has to go through its own stages based on its own experiences.
The last summit in the sub-region was in Zambia in 1972. Then Angola,
Namibia, Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe were still under colonial
rule.
Source: PANA
They proposed three options for resolving the conflict between Libya, the United States and Britain: hold the trial of the two suspects in a third and neutral country to be determined by the U.N. Security Council, have the two tried by Scottish judges at the International Court of Justice, in accordance with Scottish laws, and establish a special tribunal at the International Court to try the two men.
Leaders called on the Security Council to accept one of the options
thereby facilitating the speedy resolution of the crisis.The leaders noted
that the sanctions had brought a lot of suffering to the people of Libya.
We wish to emphasize that these obnoxious sanctions affect not only the
Libyan people but also the neighbouring countries as well as African workers
from other countries of the continent, they said.
Source: PANA
The Arab League secretariat on Monday, June 2 condemned Turkey's military operations in northern Iraq and demanded Turkish forces withdraw immediately.
Iraq says it has complained to the U.N. Security Council about
the Turkish
attacks but its pleas have gone unanswered. The secretariat of
the Cairo-based league said in a statement:
``The continuation of this aggression is likely to have a negative
effect on the
historical ties of friendship and cooperation between the Arab
states and
Turkey,'' it added.
``The secretariat...strongly condemns the Turkish military invasion
of Iraqi
territory and demands that Turkey withdraw its military forces
immediately...and refrain from repeating these violations of
the sovereignty of
Iraq.
``The exceptional situation in northern Iraq must not be exploited
and any
security or other measures, under any pretext, likely to affect
the sovereignty
of the Republic of Iraq and its territorial integrity are unacceptable,''
it said.