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Blair, Putin
to discuss UN role in post-war Iraq
British Prime
Minister Tony Blair said Monday that he was to
discuss the UN role in rebuilding Iraq with Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters
at his monthly Downing Street press conference,
Blair said: "We will obviously discuss the role
of the UN in relation to Iraq and also how we make
sure that we proceed in a better way within the
United Nations over the coming months than we have
up to now."
"And my contacts
with both other Europeans and with President Putin
lead me to believe that there is a better atmosphere
developing and I hope we can resolve these issues
and make sure that the UN is given its proper role
at the same time as dealing with the reality on the
ground of the coalition forces," Blair told
reporters.
"I have said
before, and I say again, I think with goodwill, this
can be done and can be sorted and I look forward
obviously to the discussion I will be having with
President Putin on this issue," Blair added.
Blair, the staunchest
US ally in the war with Iraq, was due to fly to
Moscow on Tuesday morning and be back to London on
Tuesday evening, a Downing Street spokeswoman said
on Monday.
Earlier media reports
said Blair's coming visit was aimed at swaying Putin
over lifting UN sanctions on Iraq.
US President George
W. Bush has urged the United Nations to lift its
sweeping sanctions on Iraq, insisting that the
regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was already
gone.
But Russia and
France, who strongly opposed the US-led war against
Iraq, expressed their opposition to
"automatically" lifting sanctions on Iraq
just because of the regime change in Iraq as
suggested by Bush.
Moscow and Paris
maintained that it was up to the UN Security Council
to decide whether and how to remove the sanctions.
Putin said he would
not allow sanctions to be lifted until chief UN
weapons inspector Hans Blix and his UN weapons
inspection team are allowed to return in Iraq. But
up to now, the United States would not allow Blix's
team back into the country.
Nigeria to sign
debt rescheduling agreements with Paris Club members
Nigeria will sign new
debt rescheduling agreements with four members of
the Paris Club in May, a Nigerian official said
Monday in the capital Abuja.
Director-General of
the Debt Management Office (DMO) Akin Arikawe told
reporters that the four Paris club members are the
United States, Denmark, Spain and Japan.
The DMO head said
that Nigeria had already signed similar agreements
with six Paris Club countries of Switzerland,
Germany, Austria, Israel, France and the Britain.
Nigeria now owes 13
members of the Paris Club a total of about 31
billion US dollars.
It is yet to
reschedule the debt it owes to the Netherlands,
Belgium and Italy.
According to Arikawe,
Nigeria's external debt stock increased from 28.3
billion dollars in December 2001 to 30.9 billion
dollars in December 2002.
He said that the
increase in the debt profile was due essentially to
the fall of the dollar against other international
currencies, particularly, the Euro.
He explained that the
jump in the nation's debt stock was also attributed
to unpaid interest and charges following the 2001
supreme court judgment removing debt service as a
first line charge from the federation account.
Africa on high
alert over SARS
Africa is on high
alert over a possible outbreak of Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), local newspaper East
African Standard reported Monday.
Ebrahim Samba, the
World Health Organization's regional director for
Africa, was quoted as saying that all medical
institutions and facilities on the continent have
been put on high alert.
Samba said the
continent is so far relatively safe from the SARS
virus, with only one suspected case reported in
South Africa.
"But this does
not mean that we relax. In fact we should be more
vigilant than ever before to ensure the spread of
the disease is contained immediately just in case of
an outbreak," he said.
Samba has come to
Kenya for an inspection tour of malaria endemic
areas in the country.
Iraqis to hold
national congress within four weeks
Prominent Iraqis on
Monday agreed to hold a national congress within
four weeks to choose an interim government following
the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
"All efforts
should be made to hold a national conference within
four weeks...to select a transitional Iraqi
government," a statement released after a
nearly 10-hour meeting said.
The meeting was held
here Monday by retired US general Jay Garner with
prominent Iraqis to discuss the political future of
postwar Iraq.
Among the
representatives were officials from the US-backed
Iraqi National Congress and the Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
But some of the major
factional leaders, including Kurdistan Democratic
Party leader Massoud Barzani, Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan chief Jalal Talabani and Iraqi National
Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, didn't participate in
the meeting.
The meeting is the
second for an "emerging leadership" of
Iraq. The first was held earlier this month in the
ancient city of Ur in southern Iraq.
Another resolution
after the meeting stressed that the US-led coalition
had a responsibility "in maintaining
security" in Iraq.
The goal of the
"all-faction" meeting was to discuss
"a democratic government which represents all
people, all religions, all tribes," Garner said
at the opening.
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