Strauss-Kahn house arrest draws media, tourists
NEW YORK, (AFP) - Fallen IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn found himself at the center of a media circus and even a tourist itinerary Saturday as he spent his first day in house arrest since being accused of attempted rape.
The French politician and now resigned head of the International Monetary Fund swapped a tiny jail cell late Friday for an apartment in a landmark Manhattan tower located on Broadway between Ground Zero and Wall Street.
But he was barred by his bail conditions from leaving the apartment, while the building itself was besieged by US camera crews with satellite TV trucks and a contingent of French journalists.
The impressive corner building and its notorious new resident also quickly made it onto the New York tourist route.
Guides on open top double deck buses made a point of highlighting "on your right is the building where the IMF chief is now under house arrest" as they cruised by.
At the entrance, a single policeman stood on guard duty. There was no visible sign of security at the back entrance, though the bail terms require an armed guard be with Strauss-Kahn in his apartment at all times.
Strauss-Kahn, who denies charges that a week ago he made a brutal sexual assault on a hotel chambermaid at the city's posh Sofitel, was freed Friday under tight security.
He paid a $1 million cash bail and a $5 million bond and agreed to live under 24-hour watch. The apartment, believed to be in the name of the security company managing his detention, has video surveillance at the exits.
In addition, Strauss-Kahn has had to give up travel documents and wear a GPS tracking device.
The measures were ordered by Judge Michael Obus in New York state court to ensure that Strauss-Kahn -- until recently considered a serious contender for the French presidency -- cannot flee to France, which does not extradite its citizens to the United States.
While on bail, the once globe-trotting VIP will prepare with his high-priced legal team for a June 6 hearing at which he is expected to enter a plea to felony charges approved by a grand jury this week.
Unless he pleads guilty, which seems unlikely, preparations will begin for a trial that may still be months away.
Defense attorneys promise the 62-year-old will "vigorously" contest the charges.
They have given little indication of their strategy against what prosecutors say is strong forensic evidence backing the maid's accusation that a naked Strauss-Kahn chased her through the hotel room where she'd gone to clean, then forced her into oral sex.
However, there have been hints that the lawyers will claim that a consensual sexual encounter may have taken place.
Strauss-Kahn, who is hugely wealthy through his heiress wife Anne Sinclair, has also hired a powerful team of private investigators to probe his accuser, a 32-year-old West African immigrant, and to conduct their own analysis of the alleged crime scene.
The Broadway address is expected to change within a few days when Strauss-Kahn moves to more permanent lodgings and slightly more relaxed conditions.
Once in the next residence, he will be allowed to go out -- after giving six hours' notice -- for medical visits, legal visits and a weekly visit to a synagogue.
The location of the next apartment is not yet public. Sinclair had initially rented plush rooms in an apartment building in Manhattan's Upper East Side on Friday but was forced to cancel when residents complained about the disruption.
The lurid case has sent ripples around the globe, setting off a heated battle between Europe and emerging powers over who should fill Strauss-Kahn's role at the helm of the world lender.
French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde is tipped as a likely successor, thereby maintaining the unwritten rule that a European should occupy the post.
Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter said her government could support Lagarde. According to a report in the German weekly Bild am Sonntag, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble also backs Lagarde.
However, emerging economic giants, including China and Brazil, are arguing that the time has come for an IMF chief from outside the old club.
Africa set to be next investment destination: Obasanjo
LAGOS, (AFP) - Resource-rich Africa is set to be the world's next investment destination thanks to an array of reforms sweeping across many previously troubled countries, a former Nigerian leader said Wednesday.
Olusegun Obasanjo, in office in Nigeria for eight years until 2007, said that after many years of stagnation the continent's economies saw a sharp growth in the past decade. Real GDP increased by 5.2 percent annually, compared with 2.3 percent in the 1990s.
"Thus with political and social issues properly settled and put behind us, Africa is all set to become the next big investment destination," Obasanjo told an international investment conference here.
"Africa's growth story is not only about its natural resources, but about reforms, including restructuring of regulatory frameworks, and policy amendments that have brought a fundamental change in the business environment, earning Africa a permanent place on every major investor's map."
Many governments still have a long way to go in terms of reforms, Obasanjo said, but the growth rates recorded so far are important first steps that have set the pace for economic growth by attracting foreign investment.
Africa's collective GDP, at 1.7 trillion dollars in 2010, is now roughly equal to Brazil's or Russia's, putting the continent among the world's most rapidly growing regions, he said.
Obasanjo said Africa's overall growth in the next five years is expected to be around eight percent -- almost double that of some advanced economies which are forecast to record around four percent. The world's average is expected to be six percent.
"Even when we compare this growth with the growth likely to be witnessed in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries, Africa overshadows Brazil which stands at 6.5 percent and is soon catching up with the rest of the giants who average around 11 percent," he said.
Obasanjo said Africa's economic pulse had quickened, infusing the continent with a new commercial vibrancy and many key sectors as banking, construction and telecommunications were treading upward.
"The resurgence has come about in spite of the fact that most African countries are still facing serious challenges such as poverty, disease and high infant and maternal mortality," he said.
The three-day conference is organised by an emerging markets investment bank, Renaissance Capital, which operates in eastern and central Europe, central Asia and Africa.
Ban Ki-moon visits Nigeria next week
LAGOS, (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon will next week pay a two-day visit to Nigeria, the UN said, just weeks after elections seen as a major step for Africa's most populous country.
The trip, his first to Nigeria since taking office in 2007, aims to promote women's and children's health, under an initiative he launched last September, the UN office in Lagos said in a statement Thursday.
The trip comes less than a month after Nigeria concluded a series of elections which, despite post-voting violence which killed around 800 people according to a global rights lobby group, were judged the fairest so far.
Ban has meetings lined up with President Goodluck Jonathan and his cabinet, as well as the head of the country's electoral agency and governors from the 36 states.
Nigeria has one of the highest maternal death rates in Africa.
About 145 women die each day during pregnancy or childbirth, as do 2,300 chidren aged five years and under, according to UN statistics, placing the country among some of the worst places in the world for childbearing women and for babies.
Lack of basic infrastructure such as electricity and functional hospitals and inadequate skilled medical personnel are just some of the factors responsible for the high death rates.
Ban, who will arrive in Nigeira on Sunday from Ivory Coast where he will attend the inauguration of President Alassane Ouattara. He will travel on to Addis Ababa.
Yemen transition plan falters, Saleh refuses to sign
SANAA, (AFP) - A Gulf mediator flew out on Sunday after failing to secure Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's signature on a transition deal for him to quit office, although his ruling party signed the accord.
Saleh set a new condition to ratify the plan proposed by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to end four months of deadly anti-Saleh protests, demanding that representatives of the opposition sign the deal in his palace.
State television aired footage of Saleh standing next to the Gulf mediator, GCC secretary general Abdullatif al-Zayani as members of the ruling General People's Congress signed the deal, a day after the opposition signed.
"The opposition will be (according to the plan) a partner in the transitional government for 90 days, so are we going to deal over the phone? Why don't they come?" he asked.
As a result, Zayani left Sanaa without Saleh's signature to Riyadh, where he was scheduled to join a meeting of GCC foreign ministers on Yemen at which its oil-rich neighbours could scrap their mediation.
"The ministers might withdraw their mediation after the refusal of President Saleh to sign," said a Gulf official in Riyadh, requesting anonymity.
Zayani and Western envoys were earlier encircled at the Emirati embassy by armed regime supporters, in a new twist that appeared to aim to stop the mediator from reaching Saleh's palace for a signing of the deal.
But he was lifted along with the US ambassador Gerald Michael Feierstein to the presidential palace in two Yemeni helicopters, a United Arab Emirates embassy official told AFP.
One chopper later carried Zayani to the airport and the other returned Feierstein to the UAE embassy to rejoin the ambassadors of Britain, the EU and the UAE, the official added.
UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahayan telephoned his Yemeni counterpart Abu Bakr al-Kurbi to call for "swift measures to secure" the embassy and its occupants, the Gulf state's WAM state news agency said.
Saleh also warned of civil war if the opposition refused to sign the GCC deal in his presence. "If they remain stubborn, we will confront them everywhere with all possible means," he said.
"If they don't bow, and want to take the country into a civil war, let them be responsible for it and for the blood that was shed and that will be shed if they insist on their stupidity," Saleh added.
Earlier in the day, GPC deputy chief Sultan al-Barakani said "the president refuses to sign until an agreement is reached on mechanisms to implement" the Gulf-brokered accord.
Under the terms of the Gulf initiative, Saleh would hand power to the vice president 30 days after the signing, and he and his aides would be granted immunity from prosecution by parliament.
A national unity government led by a prime minister from the opposition would be formed, and a presidential election would follow 60 days after Saleh's departure.
Saleh's ruling party said he does not recognise the opposition's signing of the plan, even after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the president "needs to follow through on his commitment" to cede power.
The opposition, meanwhile, urged the United States and Saudi Arabia to pressure Saleh to sign the exit plan and vowed it would press on with protests.
"Only the United States and Saudi Arabia are able to pressure him," Mohammed al-Qahtan, spokesman for the Common Forum umbrella group of opposition parties in parliament, told AFP.
"If they make it clear to him that he will be held responsible for the failure of the mediation efforts, he will sign," he said. But, "if Saleh does not sign, the revolt will escalate and he will be thrown out of office."
Opposition sources said on Saturday that they had signed the accord for Saleh to cede power, but Qahtan said: "We will not take part in any signing at the presidential palace."
Meanwhile, medics said gunmen shot dead an anti-regime protester on Sunday in the capital, as members of the opposition said the protester was killed by pro-regime "thugs."
Hundreds of the veteran leader's loyalists armed with batons blocked roads in Sanaa leading to the presidential palace, to the airport and Tahrir Square near government headquarters, said an AFP correspondent.
Hundreds of thousands of Saleh opponents also took to Sanaa streets, in their biggest rally since protests began in January. Doctors marched in their white coats, while young protesters wore the red, black and white of the Yemeni flag.
Meanwhile, Republican Guards soldiers, who are led by Saleh's son Ahmed, opened fire on demonstrators and wounded seven in the city of Taez, south of Sanaa, where hundreds of thousands called for Saleh's ouster, witnesses said.
Similar protests erupted across the strategic Arabian Peninsula country in Al-Hudaydah, Ibb, Al-Baida, Marib, Aden and Hadramawt, according to local residents.
Since late January, security forces have mounted a bloody crackdown on protests demanding Saleh's departure, leaving at least 181 people dead, according to a toll compiled from reports by activists and medics.
21 dead, 80 injured in Baghdad bombs
BAGHDAD, (AFP) - More than a dozen bomb attacks in and around Baghdad on Sunday left at least 19 Iraqis and two American soldiers dead and more than 80 other people wounded.
The series of attacks comes just days after blasts against police in a tense northern city killed 29 people, with just months to go before all US forces must withdraw from Iraq amid questions over whether local security forces are up to the task of maintaining stability in the war-wracked country.
A total of 13 roadside bombs, three vehicles packed with explosives, one magnetic "sticky bomb" and one suicide attacker struck in the spate of morning blasts on Sunday, although it was not immediately clear to what extent, if any, the violence was coordinated.
The deadliest attack saw 12 people killed and 23 wounded in a suicide bombing in the town of Taji, 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of the capital, an interior ministry official said, on condition of anonymity.
A defence ministry official put the toll at 14 dead and 30 wounded in Taji.
A car bomb had initially gone off at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in the town and when residents and ambulance crews arrived at the scene, the suicide bomber blew himself up, causing the casualties, the interior ministry official said.
Among the victims were eight police killed, while four policemen and three soldiers were wounded.
The interior ministry official said the initial car bomb had exploded as a US army convoy was passing through Taji, but an American military spokesman said he had received "no indication" of any such attack.
Also on Sunday, two American soldiers were killed, a US army statement said, in what an Iraqi security official said was a roadside bombing in the capital's western outskirts.
"Two US service members were killed Sunday while conducting operations in central Iraq," the American statement said, without giving any further details about the incident or the soldiers.
An Iraqi interior ministry official said two US soldiers were killed and three others wounded when the convoy they were in was struck by a roadside bomb.
Some 45,000 American troops remain stationed in Iraq and while they are mostly tasked with training and equipping their local counterparts, they also take part in joint counter-terror operations.
All US forces must withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year, according to a security pact with Baghdad.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called for a national dialogue with rival blocs earlier this month on whether or not to extend the US troop presence, and several top US officials have passed through Baghdad to press Baghdad to decide soon whether it wants an extension.
On Sunday, senior Kurdish defence official Jabbar Yawar called for American soldiers to stay past the year-end deadline, voicing rare support for a US military presence beyond 2011.
A dozen other roadside bombs, two car bombs and one "sticky bomb" killed seven people and wounded 61 in several other incidents across the Iraqi capital on Sunday.
The violence comes a day after seven people were killed in attacks in the northern province of Kirkuk, further raising tension in the oil-rich region after three bombings killed 29 people in Iraq's deadliest day since late March.
Violence is down dramatically in Iraq from its peak in 2006-7, but attacks remain common. A total of 211 Iraqis were killed in violence in April, according to official figures.
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