Foreign ministers from across Africa on Tuesday rejected Libya's controversial proposal for a "United States of Africa", saying the vast continent was not ready to merge into one country with a centralised administration.

Ghana's reconciliation commission has begun its second week of public hearings of horrific rights abuses and torture allegedly committed by past regimes, especially military governments.

Ethnic and political violence are likely to surge ahead of April presidential elections, Nobel laureate author Wole Soyinka said Friday. Soyinka, an outspoken critic of successive military regimes, said Nigeria was in an anarchic state in which normal government functions have been upended.

Poverty and famine have left an estimated 14 million people across Southern Africa hungry, and hunger leaves people weak and vulnerable to disease, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. United Nations AIDS Agency (UNAIDS) representative, Bunmi Makinwa, explains that: "A person with HIV needs better nutrition - more calories and more proteins - to stay healthy."

The international community and the news media are paying too much attention to Iraq and too little to the calamities facing Africa, senior U.N. officials said Wednesday. The African continent, they warn, is being threatened by a famine, destabilised by an intense civil war in Ivory Coast and endangered by an AIDS epidemic made worse by a shortage of funds.

A year after the official end of the decade-long war in Sierra Leone, the peace is enduring, but Christian Aid partners believe there is a long way to go before they can enjoy permanent peace. Abu Brima of Christian Aid partner Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) says: "The war can only really be over when we begin to address some of the root causes."

As a major UN investigation confirmed the commission of widespread atrocities against Twa 'pygmy' communities in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Minority Rights Group International (MRG) called for neighbouring states and the UN Security Council to take urgent diplomatic and humanitarian action to protect Twa and other communities from violations including mass rape, kidnapping, executions and cannibalism carried out against them by rebel factions.

Encouraged by the overall improvements in the security situation in the country, thousands of internally displaced Guineans returned to their home areas during 2002, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said on Thursday in its updated background information on the situation of displaced Guineans.

South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma ended on Thursday a four-day visit to Ethiopia and Burundi to gather support for the deployment of an African mission force in Burundi.

A tripartite agreement has been signed with the governments of Rwanda and Zambia to begin the voluntary return by air of more than 5,000 Rwandan refugees in Zambia, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported last Friday.

Over 26,000 Liberian returnees and refugees from Cote d'Ivoire require urgent assistance after fleeing recent military activities in the rebel-held western Ivorian cities of Danane and Man, UNICEF reported on Monday.

The UN Security Council has urged the government and the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) to ensure free access for humanitarian aid workers to displaced civilians and refugees, saying it was concerned about human rights in Liberia.

Thousands of civilians have fled fresh fighting between government troops and Hutu rebels in Gitega Province, the spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Burundi, Nicholas McGowan, reported.

The Implementation Monitoring Committee of the Arusha peace accord has urged the transitional government of Burundi and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to include it in visits to the interior aimed at identifying and resolving the major difficulties of repatriated and internally displaced people.

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s main challenger for Nigeria’s ruling party presidential ticket on Monday filed a suit in court to invalidate the incumbent President's nomination. Alex Ekwueme, a former civilian vice president, in his court papers said Obasanjo’s election at the 5 January People’s Democratic Party (PDP) primaries was in violation of party regulations.

Ever since the outbreak of fighting in the southwestern town of Baidoa last July, humanitarian agencies have been unable to access the town, humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) office in Kenya launched a programme on Monday to screen former Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels who wish to apply for an amnesty and return to Uganda.

The US makes no secret of its desire to expand its oil imports from Africa, aware of its present dependence on the unstable Gulf producers. "It is undeniable," said US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner last year, "that this (oil) has become of national strategic interest to us." Will US tactics in Sudan duplicate its Iraqi strategy of selective support for undemocratic governments that bolster Washington's regional needs, followed by equally selective sanctions and finally threat of all-out war to secure essential oil reserves?

Following a meeting on Thursday between President Omar Hassan el-Bashir and U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, John Danforth, it has been announced that delayed peace talks between the government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/A) will get underway on Wednesday, January 22, according to reports out of Khartoum and Nairobi.

About 10,000 Somalia refugees in Kenya are to be resettled in the US. They will be airlifted from the Kakuma and Dadaab camps in Turkana and Garissa districts from next month, the NGO facilitating the relocation programme said.