UFO Info Week-End

African nations yesterday called on the Director-General of the World Health Organisation Dr Hiroshi Nakajima to step down saying he had not

African nations yesterday called on the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Hiroshi Nakajima, to step down, saying he had not repudiated allegedly racist remarks and warning that under his leadership the WHO was losing its global role. Diplomats said the move was the second damaging blow to Dr Nakajima within a week. He blamed the violence on the anti-mediation stance of the ANC: Inkatha was the victim, not the begetter, of the violence.President Nelson Mandela, who only a week ago opposed international mediation, now agrees that there must be foreign intervention. This deal, which convinced the IFP to end its boycott of the poll, called for international mediation on outstanding constitutional issues.Yesterday the Inkatha leader, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, said political violence would decline once the government had dealt with the international- mediation issue. The death-toll since the elections stands at more than 1,000.

Yesterday’s shootings indicate that violence is not abating, in spite of more conciliatory language by ANC and Inkatha leaders over the past few days.The ANC and IFP have been trading accusations and threats over the issue of international mediation on the powers and functions of provinces and the status of the Zulu monarch.The IFP has demanded that the ANC and the formerly ruling National Party honour an agreement signed days before the April 1994 election. “Although the monthly death toll has declined from the catastrophic heights seen before the elections of April 1994, the figures remain high enough to undermine the process of national reconstruction,” a summary of the report said.While both the ANC and IFP had committed atrocities, Human Rights Watch blamed senior Inkatha members for promoting the violence for their political benefit.On Monday the Human Rights Committee, a South African group, said 78 people were killed for political reasons in the Inkatha-ruled province last month, an increase of 37 per cent on March. Once again, the spiral of violence and reprisal killings in KwaZulu/Natal threatens to spin of control.Today the New York-based Human Rights Watch Africa group releases a report which warns that the violence in KwaZulu/Natal has the potential to derail South Africa’s entire democratic experiment. The killing started early yesterday around the town of Mandini in South Africa’s troubled KwaZulu/Natal province. As people were going to school and work, gunmen struck in three different areas At least 10 people were killed.

Initial reports spoke of a massacre but police said they were unsure if the same gang was responsible for all three attacks or if they were unrelated.
So far no “official” motive has been given However, in KwaZulu/Natal non-political killings are rare. And in Mandini, one of the province’s most notorious flash points for violence between supporters of the African National Congress (ANC) and the Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), every act of violence is political.”Although we don’t know for sure the motive for the killings, given the context of the situation in Mandini, there is very little doubt that that they were political,” Senzu Mchunu, provincial head of the ANC in KwaZulu/Natal, said.While police from Durban, 56 miles south, were flown to the scene yesterday, the ANC and Inkatha were busy with their own investigations, trying to establish if the victims were their members, so as to blame the other side. Senator Dole, who had hitherto shown little interest in the location of the US embassy in Israel, repeatedly brought members of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee – one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington and which had earlier been addressed by Mr Clinton – to their feet when he told their conference he would immediately introduce legislation transferring the embassy to Jerusalem.The White House would certainly veto such a move but the Republican action further undermines Palestinian confidence in US mediation which, after the Gulf war, was the basis for the peace agreements between the PLO and Israel.. “Israel acted to tip the balance in her favour,” said Davar newspaper. “She authorised grandiose building plans in controversial areas …

and very much restricted Palestinian activity in east Jerusalem.”Further complicating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is the tussle between President Bill Clinton and Senator Dole for Jewish support in the US. The festival begins in September.”The timing is perfect to reaffirm Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem,” the right-wing Mayor of the city, Ehud Olmert, said.Some Israeli commentators suggest that Israeli actions in Jerusalem have breached the Oslo agreement of 1993, under which both sides agreed to do nothing to pre-empt next year’s talks on Jerusalem. “After the 1967 war, Israeli bulldozers demolished the Moorish quarter [to give access to the Western Wall] after a decision to confiscate it,” he said.” A tunnel dug along the Western Wall of the Haram is being extended beneath the Muslim quarter, where an exit is to be opened in the Via Dolorosa.Palestinians say the diggings have been speeded up to be ready in time for a festival called “Jerusalem 3,000″, celebrating the capture of the city 3,000 years ago by King David. In 1990 Israeli soldiers killed 17 Palestinians who had poured on to the 34-acre masonry platform known as the Haram al-Sharif in the heart of the old city to defend the Dome on the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque from an extreme Jewish group.Adnan Husseini, director of the Waqf religious endowment, which looks after the Muslim shrines, said he was outraged by repeated Israeli attempts to take over the old city. Jerusalem is still the second most important place of pilgrimage for Muslims. Fear for it mobilises Arabs and Palestinians in a way in which larger Israeli land confiscations on the West Bank do not. When he first received the Koran, the Prophet Muhammad prayed towards Jerusalem, not Mecca.

Also fuelling Palestinian anger is a bidding war for the American Jewish vote which yesterday led Senator Bob Dole and Speaker Newt Gingrich to introduce legislation in Congress to transfer the US embassy to Jerusalem.Yasser Arafat, the PLO leader, urged President Bill Clinton to resist pressure for the change. “We regret the position of some congressmen who call for the transfer of the US embassy … at a time when the peace process is facing many dangers,” Mr Arafat’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeina said.Because of its religious significance, Jerusalem is probably the one issue capable of briefly uniting the Arab states. And both sides agreed to call off talks planned for yesterday, without any agreement on a date for a future meeting.Palestinians see the proposed confiscation as the latest step in undermining their position in east Jerusalem, which they claim as their capital, but where 155,000 Palestinians are now outnumbered by 160,000 Jews. The Israeli Housing Minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, dropped another bombshell yesterday, when he talked about confiscating 300 acres in east Jerusalem, in the first stage of a plan to build 30,000 apartments. Palestinians fear Israel is trying to pre-empt negotiations about the final status of the city, which are not due to start until May next year, by systematically establishing facts on the map.
The row began on 30 April, when Israel said it would confiscate 140 acres in Arab east Jerusalem to build Jewish neighbourhoods.