Arcadia Foundation

Military operations against Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have reduced the rebels to at most 100 in Congo but most remaining fighters are in Central African Republic, the region’s weakest link, the United Nations said.

Having terrorised civilians in northern Uganda for nearly two decades, the rebels crossed into Congo’s remote northeast in late-2005, where a group of 800-1,000 fighters were untouched until Uganda led a multi-national strike on them last December.

Joseph Kony, the group’s elusive leader who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, escaped the raid and the rebels launched reprisal attacks, killing hundreds of civilians. But UN-backed anti-LRA operations have continued.“We feel that there are between 50 and 100 scattered in small pockets, mainly in the eastern part of the Garamba Park and near the border with Central African Republic,” General Babacar Gaye, the UN Congo force commander, said on Wednesday.

The rest, Gaye said, had crossed Congo’s northern border into CAR, one of the region’s poorest and most isolated states, where the LRA has already killed and kidnapped civilians.

“The LRA has always been considered a sub-regional threat. It is not a surprise that the LRA is moving towards the country where they feel they will have less difficulty to settle. They’re moving towards the weakest link,” he said.

The two decades of violence in Uganda displaced 2 million.

Brazil’s president ordered an urgent investigation on Wednesday into why more than half the country was left without electric power for hours on Tuesday night.
The whole of neighbouring Paraguay was also blacked out but for only about 15 minutes.

The power cut, which the Brazilian energy ministry said affected 18 of the country’s 27 states, brought chaos to cities including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Brasília, the capital.

It also raises doubts about the reliability of the country’s infrastructure less than a month after Rio was chosen to host the 2016 Olympic Games.

Brazil is also scheduled to host the football World Cup in 2014. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva summoned Edson Lobão, the mines and energy minister, to his office to demand an explanation for the power outage.

Thousands of passengers were stranded as metro trains came to a halt and buses failed to cope with the volume of passengers. There were widespread reports of road accidents as street lighting and traffic lights failed, and of robberies in bars and restaurants and other opportunistic street crime.

The blackout began about 10.15pm on Tuesday and lasted until about 2.45am on Wednesday in São Paulo, although power was restored gradually in some places from before midnight.

Officials initially blamed the blackout on a failure at the giant Itaipu hydro-electric dam, run jointly by the Brazilian and Paraguayan governments, which provides about 20 per cent of Brazil’s electricity and 90 per cent of Paraguay’s electric power.

However, managers at the dam told reporters it was operating normally but not supplying any electricity into the system because of a failure of transmission lines.

Itaipu officials said at least one, and probably two, major transmission lines had been brought down by lightning or severe winds, although there was no explanation for the failure by midday on Wednesday.

Opposition politicians were quick to blame the blackout on a lack of investment in Brazil’s energy sector, where generating capacity has struggled to keep pace with demand. In 2001 and 2002 the government was forced to introduce electricity rationing after a combination of poor management and low rainfall – Brazil gets about 85 per cent of its electricity from hydro-electric power – resulted in shortages.

There was no suggestion on Wednesday that this week’s blackout was caused by a lack of generating capacity, which the government has sought to increase by auctioning concessions to build alternative sources such as thermal power stations. More auctions were due to take place this month.

But the incident will renew calls for greater spending on infrastructure. Public investment in infrastructure has fallen in recent years while spending on items such as public sector pensions and payroll has grown significantly.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Craig Kelly left Honduras on Wednesday without solving the political crisis in the country.

Arriving in Honduras on Tuesday, Kelly tried to reinvigorate the dialogue between President Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

“We are moving forward on the dialogue; we think it is very important to continue ahead with the conversations,” Kelly said.

He added that the exit from the crisis for the Honduran people came from the solution of the Nov. 29 elections. “But we want to advance with the maximum support of the international community,” he remarked.

“It is important that both parties (Zelaya and Micheletti) continue advancing. We are here to support that process” Kelly said.

On Thursday, Zelaya declared that the agreement had failed, and demanded to be restored to the presidency soon to lead a government of unity and reconciliation.

According to the agreement, the Congress was empowered to decide whether to restore Zelaya to power. However, there was no deadline.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) lashed out today at South Korea for an earlier inter-Korean naval clash, and warned that South Korea would “be forced to pay dearly for the grave armed provocation.”

An article carried by the official newspaper Rodong Sinmun in the DPRK said the latest naval clash was “not a simple accidental incident but a deliberate and premeditated provocation perpetrated by the South Korean military in an effort to escalate the tension on the Korean Peninsula.”

Another official newspaper Minju Joson said the naval clash was “a deliberate and vicious move for increasing the tension and a dangerous war action of the situation on the peninsula.” It required South Korea to “stop digging its own graves, make an apology for the armed provocation and take a responsible measure against the recurrence of the similar case.”

DPRK and South Korea’s naval boats exchanged fire off west coast of the Korean Peninsula near the Northern Limit Line (NLL) area Tuesday morning. The two sides blamed each other for the clash. The DPRK and South Korea clashed near the NLL area twice previously, in 1999 and 2002.

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