THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, APRIL 16, 2007
WORLD
7A
DARFUR
African Union officer hijacked, killed
Ghanian military officer on peace-keeping mission ambushed, seventh slain this month
BY ALFRED DE MONTESQUIQU
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NYALA, Sudan — Unidentified gunmen killed a Ghanaian military officer in the African Union's peacekeeping force in the Darfur region and hijacked his car within yards of the AU mission's headquarters, the AU said Sunday.
The officer was traveling alone in his vehicle when he was ambushed in the town of El Fasher late Saturday, AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.
The ambush took place hours after Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte visited the peacekeeper headquarters during his trip to push Sudan's government to let U.N. troops reinforce the AU mission. He was in the capital, Khartoum, on Sunday to meet with Sudanese officials.
The dead officer was the seventh
peacekeeper slain this month, raising to 18 the number of AU soldiers killed since the mission deployed in 2004 to try to stop a brutal conflict between ethnic Africans and Arabs. An AU officer also has been a hostage since December.
"If this growing hostility continues, truly the mission will be compromised and we will have to take the necessary measures," Mezni told The Associated Press.
Mezni and other AU officials said they did not know the identity of the gunmen, who struck on the skirts of El Fasher, a government-controlled town in North Darfur. The 7,000-soldier AU mission has had its headquarters there since deploying to Darfur in 2004.
Mezni said more than 90 vehicles have been hijacked from the AU since the beginning of the mission.
"The AU will not let itself be dragged into the conflict," he said.
"This cannot happen. ... We came here to protect civilians. If this is becoming impossible, we will take appropriate measures."
Last week, one soldier from Rwanda's contingent in the AU mission was slain during a patrol in North Darfur and an AU car was stolen during the assault, which took place in a zone controlled by the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, the AU said. Two other Rwandans were wounded.
Earlier this month, five Senegalese peacekeepers were killed in an ambush a day after the deputy commander of the AU force narrowly escaped being shot down in his helicopter as he flew to a meeting with rebels.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003, when local rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, accusing it of decades of discrimination against
Darfur's ethnic Africans.
The International Criminal Court says the government retaliated by arming militias of Arab nomads known as the jainaew, and has listed 51 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes against a Sudanese Cabinet minister and a suspected jainaew chief.
Some rebels also have been accused of abuses. There are almost daily reports of vehicles being hijacked, aid workers assaulted and refugees harassed throughout Darfur, an arid regions nearly the size of Texas where many areas are off limits to the weakly armed AU peacekeepers.
The Sudanese government blocked a plan by the United Nations to replace them with a 22,000-strong U.N. force. But Sudan and the U.N. are now edging toward a compromise that would allow some 3,000 U.N. soldiers to deploy in Darfur as reinforcement to the AU force.
Breaking the bank
J. Scott Applewhite/ASSOCIATED PRESS
World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, left, pauses during the closing news conference at the end of the 2007 spring meetings of world financial leaders at IMF headquarters in Washington on Sunday with Mexico's Secretary of Finance Augustin Carstens, center, and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Rodrigo de Rato. The controversy involving Wolfowitz and his involvement in a pay increase awarded to a close female friend has put his position in jeopardy, but President Bush has stated his confidence in the embattled World Bank president. Wolfowitz is a former deputy defense secretary and was one of
Wolfowitz is a former deputy defense secretary and was one of the architects of Bush's Iraq war
strategy.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
》 ABDUCTION
BBC Gaza correspondant Alan Johnston is rumored to be dead. A previously unknown Palestinian group said Sunday it had killed the British journalist, seen in this undated file photo taken in the Gaza Strip, kidnapped more than a month ago by gunmen in Gaza City.
BBC Gaza reporter rumored murdered
BY IBRAHIM BARZAK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — A previously unknown Palestinian group said Sunday it had killed a British journalist kidnapped over a month ago by gunmen in Gaza City, but the claim could not be confirmed.
In a statement sent to news organizations, "The brigades of Tawheed and Jihad" said it killed BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, 42, to support demands for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. However, the BBC and the Palestinian government both said there was no evidence to back up the claim.
"The BBC is aware of these reports," the organization said in a statement. "But we have no independent verification of them."
The group claiming to have killed him is unknown in Gaza, but the name has been used elsewhere in the Middle East by organizations linked to al-Oaida.
"This party that issued the statement about the so-called killing is unknown to the security services,"
Palestinian Interior Minister Hani Kawasmeh told a news conference in Gaza City. "There is no information to confirm the killing of Johnston until now"
Johnston; from Scotland, was snatched at gunpoint in Gaza City on March 12. Since then there had been no demands from his captors or any word on his condition.
He has been missing longer than any other foreigner kidnapped in Gaza. The only foreign reporter still based in Gaza, he was snatched just weeks before he was scheduled to end his three-year stint there. Other news organizations withdrew their foreign-born reporters because of the deteriorating security situation there.
More than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers have been abducted by gunmen in Gaza in the past 18 months, often in a bid by Palestinian militants to get money or jobs. Most have been released without major physical injury within hours or days. An exception was the abduction of two Fox News employees in August, who were held for two weeks before they were freed.
》 HOLOCAUST
Catholic ambassador attends memorial
BY ARON HELLER ASSOCIATED PRESS
JERUSALEM — The Vatican's ambassador to Israel attended a Holocaust memorial service on Sunday, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the event that threatened to upset fragile ties between Israel and the Holy See.
Monsignor Antonio Franco said last week he would skip the ceremony at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial marking the beginning of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day because Catholics were offended by a caption at the museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.
The caption next to the picture of Pius reads, "Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews.
Pius "maintained his neutral posi
tion" with two exceptions — appeals he made to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war, the caption says. It also criticizes "his silence and absence of guidelines."
Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations in 1993 following hundreds of years of painful relations between Catholics and Jews. Many sensitive issues remain unresolved, including the Vaticans actions during the Nazi genocide of Jews.
The Vatican has struggled to defend its wartime pope as it pushes his sainthood cause, insisting that Pius spearheaded discreet diplomacy that saved thousands of Jews.
The disputed photo caption first appeared in 2005, when Yad Vashem opened its new museum.
Shortly after, the previous Vatican ambassador asked that it be changed.
The memorial service is traditionally attended by all foreign ambassadors to Israel or their representatives.
insisting its research on the pope's role was accurate.
Had Franco stayed away, Yad Vashem said it would have been the first time a foreign emissary deliberately skipped the ceremony.
Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, is observed from sundown Sunday to sundown Monday with memorial ceremonies, somber music on the radio and historical documentaries and movies on national television.
But Yad Vashem has not done so,
On Monday at 10 a.m., sirens will wail throughout Israel for two minutes with Israelis standing silently to remember the victims.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said the memorial appreciated Franco's decision, calling it "the right thing to do."
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