Pack your bags, we're going on a guilt trip, 2 of them>
Liberian Rebels Ask For Immediate US Deployment
Nico Colombant
Abidjan
15 Jul 2003, 14:47 UTC
Liberian rebels are again asking for the immediate deployment of U-S forces to end the civil war in the west African nation founded by freed American slaves. Their renewed plea comes after President Bush said Monday the deployment of a small U-S force was possible but only after west African peacekeepers arrive.
Rebel envoys at peace talks in Ghana Tuesday said the presence of U-S soldiers would immediately defuse the situation in Liberia.
They also say U-S troops should arrive before west African peacekeepers, who are scheduled to deploy in the coming weeks. One rebel envoy is quoted as saying new faces were needed for what he called psychological comfort.
West African peacekeepers sent to Liberia during the 1990s failed to stop fighting then. Liberia has seen nearly 15 years of continuous civil war since President Charles Taylor launched his own rebellion.
Monday, rebel field commanders warned they will take over the capital Monrovia, if they launch a new offensive.
A cease-fire reached at the talks in Ghana last month calls for the establishment of a transitional government without Mr. Taylor, but the Liberian president says peacekeepers should arrive before he leaves power.
Both the rebels and Mr. Bush have called on Mr. Taylor to leave Liberia immediately.
Mr. Taylor has been offered political asylum in Nigeria, but if he goes there, he could face the threat of arrest on an indictment for war crimes by a special court in Sierra Leone.
A former U-N expert who recommended international sanctions against Liberia during the late 1990s, Ian Smillie, says he does not believe the indictment interferes with peace efforts.
He says, "I'm not sure that the indictment has anything to do with efforts for peace. This is an indictment but it's not a conviction. What the special court wants is to get Charles Taylor into the courtroom. Charles Taylor has got his own back to the wall militarily and that's got nothing to do with the indictment or anything else."
Rebels control most of Liberia, but have been unable to capture Monrovia during their four-year insurgency.
Mr. Taylor, whose own forces greatly outnumber the rebels, has warned if the indictment is not lifted, peace efforts will fail. He has denied charges he has fueled instability throughout west Africa, including Sierra Leone but also Ivory Coast and Guinea, by supporting rebels and smuggling diamonds, timber and weapons
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WHO Calls for Free Anti-TB Drugs to AIDS Patients
By Emelia Sithole
PARIS (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (news - web sites) (WHO) called on Tuesday for free anti-tuberculosis drugs to be made widely available to HIV (news - web sites) sufferers, who are especially hard hit by the highly infectious disease.
About a third of the 42 million people living with the AIDS (news - web sites) virus also have TB and the WHO says 90 percent of them will die within a few months unless they get treatment.
"It's essentially immoral not to make this cheap and effective treatment of TB widely available, particularly to those infected with HIV/AIDS," WHO acting director Mario Raviglione told a news conference.
In a report released at the International Aids Society conference in Paris, the WHO said it was short of $3.8 billion for a $9.1 billion five-year plan to halt the spread of tuberculosis by 2005.
"The WHO is calling for free anti-TB drugs and quality care to be made widely available for people living with HIV, along with renewed efforts to increase access to anti-retrovirals in developing countries," it said in a statement.
The report, released a day before a donors' meeting on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, presents harrowing pictures of the ravages of the disease which the WHO says can be treated by a course of drugs costing $10 per patient, but every year infects eight million and causes two million deaths.
Winstone Zulu, a Zambian activist who was the first person in the southern African country to declare publicly that he was HIV-positive, told the news conference he was lucky to be alive today.
He was saved by a friend who bought the life-prolonging anti-TB drugs for him from South Africa after he contracted the disease in 1997.
His four brothers were not so fortunate. They have all died of TB over the years because they had no easy access to the drugs and at times could not afford them.
NO EXCUSE
"We have no excuse... The drugs cost less than $10," Zulu told reporters.
Zulu and Raviglione criticized the treatment by some governments of the AIDS and TB problems as two separate issues.
"Ten years after an unprecedented declaration of a global tuberculosis emergency by WHO, the TB epidemic has grown even worse, primarily due to the spread of HIV," Raviglione said.
"We need to increase our efforts to address the deadly synergy between the two diseases, each of which is fueling the other's impact," he said.
HIV sufferers are more vulnerable to TB bacteria because the AIDS virus attacks the immune system.
The WHO warned in a statement that an even greater TB/HIV crisis might be emerging in India, where the AIDS virus is rapidly spreading in the country with the highest caseload worldwide of TB infections.
India has 4.5 million people infected with TB, with 1.8 million new cases being reported each year.
HIV is also causing a six percent annual increase in the number of TB cases across sub-Saharan Africa, the WHO said.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to an estimated 30 million people living with HIV/AIDS and the WHO says 70 percent of those infected with HIV have no access to anti-TB drugs.
In South Africa, which has the highest known HIV caseload in the world, the disease kills more than a third of all HIV-infected people, the WHO report said.
"With over 11 percent of the population HIV-positive -- more than five million people -- the disaster is just beginning," it said. |
