Peoples Bark News Berkeley BULLETIN -12/20/01

PBNB Readers;
More news of interest!!

==============================

Argentina in state of siege
By KEVIN GRAY
Associated Press

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - President Fernando De la Rua declared a state of siege Wednesday, seizing special powers to deal with widespread rioting and looting sparked by a deepening economic crisis. At least five people were killed and 100 injured in a day of violence.
De la Rua defended his emergency decree in a nationally televised address, saying it was needed to quell unrest that convulsed much of the Capital, Buenos Aires, and many of Argentina's largest cities.
The development followed a Cabinet meeting called by De la Rua to respond to the frenzied violence. Riot police on Wednesday sent looters fleeing amid a fusillade of rubber bullets and tear gas in poor
neighborhoods ringing Buenos Aires and in more than a dozen cities nationwide.
``I urge those that are doing violence to cease those acts,'' De la Rua said, suggesting some of the looting had been organized by criminals. ``With violence, we won't solve any of our problems.''
Five people died, some from gunshot wounds, and more than 100 were reported injured during Wednesday's violence, which marked a troubling new chapter in the crisis that has tormented Argentina for four years.
Authorities reported more than 320 arrests.
The president didn't discuss details of the state of siege. But government spokesman Juan Pablo Baylac said the measure would be in place 30 days, allowing authorities the right to suspend constitutional guarantees such as the right to assemble and travel freely, while giving police greater powers to make arrests.
Baylac also said the government would release $7 million in food aid for many of the impoverished areas where looters overran supermarkets, shops and some government buildings to protest harsh austerity policies.
It was the most furious unrest after sporadic looting that has taken place daily since a national strike Dec. 13 - the eighth in two years. It also marked the most serious challenge to the increasingly unpopular
president and his economy minister, Domingo Cavallo.
By nightfall, looting had spread to at least a half dozen cities across Argentina, including Mendoza, Rosario, Santiago del Estero and San Juan, as hundreds of people descended on stores and carried away everything from bicycles and home appliances to washing machines.
The government sent federal police to back up the local Buenos Aires police in cat-and-mouse games with angry crowds that shifted from street to street, forcing shop owners to shutter metal gates and flee.
In western Argentina, police stormed city hall in the major city of Cordoba, 475 miles northwest of the capital, where rioting workers had trashed their offices, smashing and overturning furniture.
Argentines are desperate after years of recession that has stopped South America's second-largest economy in its tracks. The government, strapped to make payments on the country's staggering $132 billion public debt, has partially frozen accounts to halt a run on the banks. The jobless rate has soared to near record levels.
Violence erupted late Tuesday night, with some 2,000 people looting in the San Miguel commercial district in greater Buenos Aires. Police finally used tear gas to quell the crowd.
But thousands of angry, disgruntled Argentines regrouped during the day Wednesday in poor and widely scattered neighborhoods around the capital.
``We want food and if the government won't give us any, we'll just take it!'' shouted Liliana Gimenez, a 62-year-old woman among the crowd that massed outside a supermarket defended by riot police and two tractor-trailer trucks blocking the gates.
Police brandished riot shields and rifles and stood shoulder-to-shoulder outside the huge supermarket, where edgy managers tried to calm hundreds of people with promises to distribute hundreds of bags of foodstuffs.
After a half hour of negotiations with the supermarket officials, an 18-wheeler supermarket truck was rolled out to the crowd and leaders of the mob hurled bags of rice, cooking oil, even holiday sweet bread, to outstretched hands in the frenzied crowd.
``We are hungry and we are desperate. We will keep looting. We need food for Christmas,'' said one man who only gave his name as Osvaldo. He hauled away milk, rice and jars of mayonnaise. Others piled shopping carts with groceries or shoveled food into duffel bags - scenes that were repeated
around the country.
At Cinco Estrellas, a grocery near a Buenos Aires housing project, the crowd fled as police waded in, firing rubber bullets and tear gas that left a stench wafting over the streets. Crowds of teen-agers, some with their faces covered, hurled rocks at supermarket officials and passing trucks.
Elderly people also joined in the looting, picking up scattered goods.
The scenes recalled images of Argentina's last financial crisis, in 1989, when supermarkets were looted amid triple-digit hyperinflation.
Then-President Raul Alfonsin was forced to leave office six months early.
Wednesday was the first time violence crept into the capital, a move which bodes ill for De la Rua's embattled government.
Just two years after taking office, the president is trying to implement his government's ninth austerity plan. So far, the belt-tightening has included 13 percent cuts in state workers' wages, higher taxes and moves to slash pensions.
Hoping to blunt the rising hunger and poverty, the government this week began disbursing more than 400,000 pounds of food aid.
The recession was triggered by years of public overspending and heavy borrowing. The jobless rate has hit near-record levels of over 18 percent, with nearly 15 million of the 36 million population are living at or below the poverty line.

http://cold.jrnl.com/cfdocs/new/pg/story.cfm?
paper=pg§ion=fp&snumber=13

http://www.argentinanews.com/


=======================
US INVADES MOHELI
=======================

From: eric stewart <sonsun2012 [at] yahoo.com>
Reply-To: bay_area_activist [at] yahoogroups.com
Subject: US INVADES MOHELI
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 09:05:54 -0800 (PST)

Troops claiming to be US soldiers landed on the Comoran isle of Moheli, seizing control of the security forces on the island, a former prime minister said by phone.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/011219/1/25by3.html

=============================

Wednesday December 19, 10:42 PM
Comoran government says it regains control from gunmen
By Ahmed Ali Amir


MORONI (Reuters) - The Comoran government said it regained control of the remote Indian Ocean island of Moheli after a small band of masked foreign gunmen stormed it on Wednesday.

Officials said five of the foreign troops, all of them white, had been killed and a wounded soldier had been taken prisoner, while the others had fled.

The Comoran islands have seen a succession of military coups since independence from France in 1975.

There have been a number of coup attempts this year alone in the run-up to a referendum planned for next Sunday to approve a new constitution aimed at ending a long-running secessionist crisis on the islands.

The masked gunmen landed on Moheli by speedboat in the early hours of the morning, swiftly seizing control of the police station and telecommunications office in the capital Fomboni and cutting phone lines.

But the government on the main island of Grande Comore said it sent troops to Moheli by plane where they soon overcame the invasion force.

"The army has liberated the occupied zone," said government spokesman and Information Minister Ali Toihir.

"After an exchange of gunfire, the attackers were killed while the others fled," he said, adding that one government soldier had been wounded.


BIN LADEN RUMOURS DENIED

The incursion, which some government officials described as a coup attempt, briefly grabbed world attention after reports the gunmen had distributed leaflets in English linking Comoran military strongman Colonel Azaly Assoumani with Osama bin Laden.

But rumours that it might be a U.S. assault on followers of the Saudi-born militant, top suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States, were swiftly quashed. Diplomats said the white soldiers spoke perfect French.

Prime Minister Hamada Madi Bolero told Reuters he believed the white troops were mercenaries sent to destabilise the government of the overwhelmingly Muslim country of 700,000.

The bodies of three of the dead soldiers were taken to the main hospital in the capital of Grande Comore, Moroni, but journalists were not allowed in. Witnesses said one appeared to have been shot but the other two seemed to have been strangled.

Diplomats said it was too early to be sure of the soldiers' motives but their action could disrupt the referendum plans.

"This kind of action does not augur well for what we are going to do on Sunday," said Francisco Madeira, special envoy to the Comoros of the Organisation of African Unity. "It is a negative thing which we condemn strongly."

The OAU strongly supports the new constitution for the three islands of the Comoran Federation, which would reunite them after Anjouan unilaterally seceded in 1997.

"We are going to appeal to the people of the three islands ...not to accede to pressure, and to come out strongly and vote massively, and give a 'yes' to this new constitution," Madeira said.


=============================
=============================
Pravda.RU:Main:More in detail
16:22 2001-12-19
http://64.4.16.250/cgi-bin/linkrd?_lang=EN&lah=158d23dc8e1c64772aaf234bb576ed23&lat=1008879779&hm___action=http%3a%2f%2fenglish%2epravda%2eru%2fmain%2f2001%2f12%2f19%2f24007%2ehtml

DMITRY LITVINOVICH: AMERICA IS OCCUPYING THE COMORO ISLANDS

American troops invaded Panama 12 years ago on December 20, 1989 and arrested the head of the state, General Manuel Noriega. The general was convicted by an American court for his active participation in the illegal drug commerce. The same thing is now happening on the Comoro islands, but this time under the guise of the struggle with the international terrorism.

The USA continued its “war with terror,” having dispatched not less than 100 commandos to the island of Moheli (or Mwali) on Wednesday morning. Moheli is included in the Islamic republic of the Coromo Islands. This republic is a member of the Arab League.

The Al-Jazeera TV company reported that the American military, which arrived in special American transport aircraft, placed all the military structures of the Comoro islands under their control, including the army and the police. The leaflets, which have been reportedly dropped on the island, said that the United States of America was continuing its anti-terrorist operation on the territory of the Comoro islands. It was also said that the island was taken by the US Army within the framework of the anti-terrorist operation and charged the president of the Islamic Republic of the Comoro Islands, Assoumani Azzali, of rendering support to terrorists. The leaflets also called upon the population to lay down its arms. It is not clear from Al-Jazeera’s information if the deployment of the American commandos was a military invasion of the United States, or maybe it is an attempt an inner coup d’etat under the disguise of the foreign “anti-terrorist operation.”

BBC supported the information of the Qatar TV company. As the British Broadcasting Corporation reported, a group of the armed men landed on the island of Moheli, which is the smallest of the Comoro archipelago, and took control of the local police. The special representative of the African Union on the Comoro Islands said to the BBC that there were about 20 armed men, both black and white, who were speaking English and French. The reasons why this is all happening now are not clear, but as the special representative of the African union believed, the reasons could be dictated by the opposition to the coming referendum about the political future of the islands ( the referendum is to take place on December 23).

The political instability on the Comoro islands is not new. Two islands, included in the Comoro archipelago, proclaimed their independence in 1997. Incumbent President Azali Assoumani came to power on the Comoro islands in April of 1999 with the help of a coup de’tat. The Comoro islands are included in the Arab League; the Islamic Republic of the Comoro islands is a member of the All-Arab joint defense treaty. All members of the League are considered to have a warfare with any state that assaults one of its members. At the same time, as RIA Novosti reported, a representative of the American embassy in Kenya stated in Nairobi that he did not have any information about the military operation on the Comoro islands.

It is hard to say what this all means. If it is an anti-terrorist operation, the goal of which is to destroy the terrorist groups based on the archipelago, then why was there nothing said about it before? Or maybe it is a coup de’tat, at which the Americans are now good at (the events in Panama and Grenade are the examples).

France should not be ruled out of the events in the Comoros; this country would not mind having the islands back with the help of the “democratic referendum.” But, of course, none of the officials will say it out loud that Paris is watching the development of the situation on the Comoros with interest. France still has to prove it did not have anything in common with the funding of the latest attempt of a coup that took place in 1995. We will see, what is going to happen.

Reference: The Comoro Islands are an archipelago of four islands and several islets located in the western Indian Ocean about ten to twelve degrees south of the Equator and less than 200 miles off the East African coast. They lie approximately halfway between the island of Madagascar and northern Mozambique at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel. The archipelago is the result of volcanic action along a fissure in the seabed running west-northwest to east-southeast. The total area of the four islands is 785 square miles (2,034 square kilometers). The four major islands are Ngazidja, Mwali, Nzwani, and Mayotte (Maore). The total population of the Comoro Islands is estimated to be over 600,000 people today. Over 27% live in urban areas. A 1980 estimate of the average density was 182.5 persons per square kilometer, varying between 65.5 persons per square kilometer in Mwali and 349.1 persons per square kilometer in Nzwani. Today the densities are much higher. The present population increase is an estimated 3.5% per year with an annual birth rate of 47 births per 1,000 and an annual death rate of 12 deaths per 1,000 population. The most recent estimate of the total fertility rate is 6.8 children born per woman. Life expectancy at birth is 54 years for males and 59 years for females. The inhabitants are a blend of various peoples of the Indian Ocean littoral. African, Malagasy, and Arabic features are clearly evident. Maritime commerce before entry of Europeans into the Indian Ocean brought the Comorians into contact with peoples from southern Africa to southeast Asia. Since the end of the fifteenth century European influence has also impacted upon the Comorian life.

Dmitry Litvinovich
PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov

CNN graphic

Read the original in Russian: http://pravda.ru/main/2001/12/19/34952.html



no peace without justice,

john vance, editor/coordinator
A First Amendment Center
Peoples Bark News Berkeley
Berkeley, Ca
http://www.freezepeach.cjb.net