FEBRUARY 18 2013 PROGRAMME

NEWS

Mali sets 7 July election date

Mali will hold nationwide presidential elections on 7 July, the interim government's territorial administration minister has announced.

It would be a key step to stabilising Mali following the intervention of French troops to oust Islamist fighters from the north of the country, he said.

Legislative elections will follow on 21 July, along with a presidential run-off if required.

Thousands of troops from France and African nations are currently in Mali.

Elections were due in Mali in April 2012, but a coup the month before threw the country into disarray.

Foreign workers abducted in Bauchi state

Seven foreign workers have been seized and a security guard shot dead by gunmen who attacked a construction company site in northern Nigeria, officials say.

One of the workers seized was Italian, one was Greek and two others Lebanese.

But UK officials could not confirm a report that another was British.

No-one has admitted the abductions but the Islamist militant group, Boko Haram, has staged a series of attacks in northern Nigeria.

A security guard was killed as the attackers targeted the workers' camp at Jama'are in Bauchi state.

Correspondents say it is the biggest kidnapping in northern Nigeria in recent times.

Foreigners held in Libya on suspicion of proselytizing

Four foreign nationals have been arrested in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on suspicion of being Christian missionaries, officials say.

A spokesman for Preventative Security said they were under investigation for printing and distributing tens of thousands of books about Christianity.

Proselytising was forbidden in the predominantly Muslim country, he added.

Those arrested were an Egyptian, a South African, a South Korean and a Swede with joint US citizenship.

Brahimi urges Syria peace talks at UN

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League joint envoy, has called for talks between the Syrian opposition and an "acceptable delegation" from the Damascus government on a political solution to the country's 23-month-old civil war.

In a joint press conference in Cairo with Nabil El-Araby, the Arab League secretary-general, Brahimi said on Sunday that negotiations could begin on UN premises. He gave no specific location.

The initiative of opposition leader Mouaz al-Khatib, which calls for talks with any Syrian representative not directly involved in repression, "has opened the door and challenged the Syrian government to live up to what it has been continuously saying, that it is ready for dialogue and a peaceful solution", Brahimi said.

Khatib, the head of the Syrian National Coalition, offered last week to hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad's ceremonial deputy, Farouq al-Sharaa, on a political transition in which Assad would be given safe passage to go into exile.


COMMENTARIES:

1) INSECURITY/ TERRORISM TODAY- CASE STUDY OF PAKISTAN, IRAQ AND NIGERIA.
2) THE BAUCHI KIDNAP
3) ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND JOB CREATION
4) LOCAL POLITICS- THE MERGER OF OPPOSITION PARTIES AND THE LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS