Free Republic

IRAN is seeking to import large consignments of bomb-making uranium from the African mining area that produced the Hiroshima bomb, an investigation has revealed. A United Nations report, dated July 18, said there was “no doubt” that a huge shipment of smuggled uranium 238, uncovered by customs officials in Tanzania, was transported from the Lubumbashi mines in the Congo. Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check. The disclosure will heighten western fears about the extent of Iran’s presumed...

UN cuts details of Western profiteers from Congo report By Declan Walsh in Nairobi 27 October 2003 A controversial section has been omitted from a UN report on the plunder of wealth in the Democratic Republic of Congo due out this week. Senior UN officials objected to part of the report by a UN panel investigating the illegal exploitation of Congo's wealth, fearing it could derail the peace process. Sources say the section includes details on how shady networks of business and military figures, some tied to the governments of Rwanda and Uganda, are continuing illegally to export gold, diamonds...

<p>So now, it seems, China will commit troops to the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Congo. While not a grand scale — just 175 engineers and 43 medics will be deployed — the contribution marks China's biggest overseas operation since the U.N. effort in Cambodia a decade ago.</p>

France accused of genocide role Kagame denies ordering the shooting down of the Rwandan president's plane in 1994 Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused French people of "direct involvement" in the 1994 genocide. He told the French state-owned RFI radio that they provided weapons and training, and gave orders to those who killed some 800,000 people. He said the "French elements" were acting on government orders. The president was speaking a week after a French daily reported a police report that blamed him for a rocket attack that precipitated the massacre. "Sooner or later they will have to account for...

In just 12 weeks the world will commemorate the 10th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. That somber thought was on my mind as my friend, the distinguished African-American journalist Peter Noel, took me the other night for a tour of Harlem. We passed by Bill Clinton's office, and Peter told me how significant crowds, nearly all African-Americans, await the arrival most mornings of the man dubbed "America's first black president." That description – coined in 1998 by African-American Nobel laureate Toni Morrison – as well as the African-American rapture for Bill Clinton, is nothing short of astonishing. Calling Clinton...

NAIROBI, Kenya -- More than 3 million people have died during Congo's civil war, the vast majority from malnutrition and disease, a relief organization said Tuesday. The International Rescue Committee said in a report that at least 85 percent of the 3.3 million deaths were from easily treatable diseases and malnutrition. IRC Congo Report: http://www.theIRC.org

Thu 9 Jan 2003 Pygmies being eaten by rebels in Congo's ongoing war, UN reveals JAMES ASTILL IN NAIROBI REBEL soldiers are massacring and eating pygmies in the dense forests of north-east Congo, UN investigators said yesterday. A UN team has spent the past week investigating allegations of cannibalism in remote Ituri province, where fresh fighting between several rebel groups has displaced around 150,000 people in the past month. Many of the displaced tell of rebel fighters capturing and butchering pygmies across the front-line, said Manoddje Mounoubai, a spokesman for the UN cease-fire monitoring mission in Congo yesterday. "The UN...