Cameroon’s government has blasted the United States for accusing its forces of abuses, including “targeted killings,” in an English-speaking region of the country wracked by a separatist insurgency.

In a statement received by AFP on Thursday, the foreign ministry said it had expressed its “deep disapproval” of comments made by US ambassador in Yaounde, Peter Barlerin, last week.

His action “violates all diplomatic conventions as well as the rules of civility and law, both in style and substance,” it said.

Barlerin was summoned to the foreign ministry on Tuesday, four days after alleging government forces had carried out “targeted killings” and other abuses against militants demanding independence for two English-speaking regions.

“On the side of the government, there have been targeted killings, detentions without access to legal support, family, or the Red Cross, and burning and looting of villages,” the ambassador said in a statement.

“On the side of the separatists,” he also stressed, “there have been murders of gendarmes, kidnapping of government officials, and burning of schools”.

The statement followed warnings by rights watchdogs over abuses in the conflict. It was issued after Barlerin met Cameroon’s 85-year-old president, Paul Biya.

The foreign ministry statement said such allegations were “totally unfounded.”

“Despite almost daily harassment and heavy losses in terms of lives and equipment, (the security forces) have always kept in mind, with professionalism and rigour, the rules of engagment and international humanitarian law.”

Anglophones account for about a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 22 million.

Most of them live in the Northwest and Southwest regions that in colonial times were administered by Britain, joining francophone Cameroon after it gained independence from France in 1960.

Decades of resentment about perceived marginalisation in education, the judiciary and the economy escalated last year, culminating in the announcement on October 1 of a putative separate state called Ambazonia.

According to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, “at least 120” civilians and “at least 43” security forces have been killed since the end of 2016.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says around 160,000 people have been internally displaced and 20,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Nigeria as a result of the violence.

Source:AFP

US President Donald Trump has called off his planned summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The unprecedented summit was scheduled to take place on June 12 in Singapore.

Trump made the announcement in a letter released by the White House on Thursday.

“I was very much looking forward to being there with you,” Trump said in the letter. “Sadly, based on the tremendous anger and open hostility displayed in your most recent statement, I feel it is inappropriate, at this time, to have this long-planned meeting.”

On Tuesday, Trump expressed doubts about the meeting taking place as scheduled when he hosted South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House.

Moon’s visit to the US was originally arranged as a meeting to fine-tune a joint strategy for dealing with North Korea but instead became more of a crisis session after Pyongyang last week threatened to scrap plans for the summit.

The summit’s cancellation is a major blow to what Trump supporters hoped would have been the biggest diplomatic achievement of his presidency.

The White House was caught off-guard when North Korea condemned the latest US-South Korean military drills, suspended North-South talks, and threatened to cancel the Trump-Kim summit.

Washington will “have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military” said the North’s official news agency KCNA on Tuesday.

The United States, which has substantial presence in South Korea, was on a war footing with the North over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. But relations have dramatically improved in the past four months and a half.

Pyongyang has also announced plans to dismantle its Punggye-ri nuclear test site by the end of May, prior to the North Korea-US summit meeting. It has also suspended its missile and nuclear programs but has not publicly committed to abandoning those programs.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has said his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “may not work out” in June, raising further doubt about whether the historic meeting would occur as planned.

Trump made the comment during a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the Oval Office of the White House on Tuesday.

“We’re moving along. We’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters. “There are certain conditions we want to happen. I think we’ll get those conditions. And if we don’t, we won’t have the meeting.”

The US president did not specify the conditions Washington was setting for the landmark meeting due in Singapore on 12 June.

“There is a very substantial chance that it won’t work out, but that’s OK,” he added. “It doesn’t mean it won’t work out over a period of time, but it may not work out for June 12. But there is still a good chance we’ll have the meeting.”

The South Korean president, for his part, expressed optimism about the occurrence of the planned summit between Trump and Kim, and said he was “confident” that the meeting between the two sides would be a success.

“We are looking forward to the first US-North Korea summit and we find ourselves standing one step closer to the dream of achieving the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and world peace,” Moon said.

“I have no doubt that you will be able to complete and accomplish an historic feat that no one has been able to achieve in the decades past,” he added.

During the Tuesday talks in the Oval Office, Trump said he believed the North Korean leader was “absolutely very serious” about denuclearization and stressed that Kim’s safety would be guaranteed under any deal that eliminated his nuclear weapons.

Pyongyang threatened last week to scrap plans for what would be a historic meeting between Trump and Kim in Singapore on June 12 over US pressure on the North.

North Korea not only threatened to cancel the unprecedented summit with Washington but also suspended a high-level meeting with Seoul after South Korea conducted joint military drills with the US on the Korean Peninsula.

The talks were supposed to discuss implementing a declaration issued at the end of an April 27 inter-Korea summit, which included interest in the “common goal” of denuclearization.

South Korea has vowed to mediate talks between the United States and North Korea.

Washington and Pyongyang have no diplomatic relations. The US has imposed many rounds of sanctions on North Korea, has substantial military presence near the country, and has numerously threatened to invade it over its weapons programs.

Trump has previously suggested the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea would be the best place for the high-stakes summit, but American officials had asked him to hold the talks in a third country.

Singapore has diplomatic relations with both the United States and North Korea.

The Trump-Kim summit, if it takes place, would mark the first such meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader in history.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis has been raised in the House of Commons – the United Kingdom’s lower house of Parliament with a request from the government as to what it is doing over the situation.

The issue was raised by MP Jessica Morden (Labour Party member for Newport East) who wanted answers over the security crisis and the resultant refugee crisis in the Central African country.

Her question directed to the British Minister for Africa, Harriet Baldwin also demanded ‘a meaningful process to address the issue and to end the violence.’

In response, Baldwin reiterated the U.K. stance that there was the need for cessation of violence by parties and more than anything for the process of inclusive dialogue given that key polls are slated for later this year. Below are her full remarks:

“I am delighted Mr. Speaker that she has managed to get this important issue on the Order Paper and for discussion here in the House of Commons because it is a serious situation, there violence from all sides in Cameroon, we are extremely concerned about the situation.

“And we are encouraging the government but all Cameroonians to participate in the process of inclusive dialogue. It’s an election year and this must take place without resorting to violence.”

The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its opposite is the upper house, known as the House of Lords. Both chambers meet in the Palace of Westminster.

Officially, the full name of the house is the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled.

Baldwin, MP for West Worchestershire who doubles as a Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on a trip to Cameroon called for dialogue. She visited capital of the southwest region of Buea and met with a number of stakeholders.

“Important visit to Buea in South West Anglophone region hearing from local people about the impact of the ongoing dispute and the urgent need for dialogue,” she said in a tweet accompanied by a photo of a meeting of leaders in Buea.

Source: Africa News

Germany has joined its European allies in reaffirming support for the Iran nuclear deal in defiance of the US that pulled out of the landmark agreement last week.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday pushed back against Washington’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal, and reasserted a defense of the agreement in remarks to lawmakers in the Bundestag lower house of parliament.

She also said that Iran was complying with its commitments under the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“This agreement is everything other than ideal, but Iran is, according to all the knowledge of the international nuclear authorities, sticking to the commitments of the agreement,” Merkel said.

US President Donald Trump announced on May 8 that Washington was walking away from the JCPOA, which was reached between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — the US, Britain, France, Russia and China — plus Germany in 2015.

Trump also said he would reinstate US sanctions on Iran lifted by the accord and impose “the highest level” of economic bans on the Islamic Republic.

The deal lifted sanctions in 2016 in return for Tehran limiting its nuclear program.

Iran has reiterated it would remain in the JCPOA for now, pending negotiations with the other signatories in the coming weeks before making a final decision on its future role in the agreement.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and his counterparts from Britain, France and Germany in Brussels on Tuesday.

Following the meeting, Mogherini told reporters that European top diplomats had agreed to follow through the Iran nuclear deal despite Trump’s decision to withdraw.

To this end, the EU will launch intensive discussion at all levels with Iran in next few weeks, she said, adding that the discussion would focus on, among others, how to maintain economic relations and effective banking transactions with Iran in the context of renewed US sanctions.

“We are determined to ensure that the JCPOA stays in place. We know it’s a difficult task but we are determined to do that,” Mogherini said, adding, “We’ve started to work to put in place measures that help ensuring that this happens.”

She noted that similar willingness has been expressed by the European and Iranian sides.

Before visiting Europe, Zarif first traveled to China and later Russia, the two other signatory nations that have supported the JCPOA, on the first leg of his diplomatic mission.

Meanwhile, in their first meeting since the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, EU leaders are expected to meet to explore options on Wednesday for keeping the Iran nuclear deal alive and protecting their reviving economic cooperation with Tehran.

“I would like our debate to reconfirm without any doubt that as long as Iran respects the provisions of the deal, the EU will also respect it,” the chairman of the gathering, Donald Tusk, said before the meeting in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will also host Merkel on Friday to discuss, among other issues, the Iran deal.

Source: Presstv

Cat calls have greeted the recent US military donations to La Republique du Cameroun. The Southern Cameroons political leadership has refused to comment on the combat aircrafts donation from the Trump administration to the butchers in Yaoundé.  However, many of the Ambazonian political elites contacted by Cameroon Intelligence Report opined that the United States was appearing like an intransigent rogue state pursuing only its own interests at the expense of human rights and freedom and has blatantly refused to push the Paul Biya Francophone regime to curb attacks in Southern Cameroons.

To be sure, the US won’t deploy carrots or sticks to even stop the genocide currently going in Southern Cameroons and it won’t scold the French Cameroun political leadership for crackdowns against innocent Southern Cameroons civilian population. Interestingly, US President Donald Trump just this week cancelled the historic nuclear deal with Iran and reiterated that it was a bad deal. But to hand over two aircrafts to the regime in Yaoundé with the potential to scan and detect enemy hideouts is completely unacceptable to the people of Southern Cameroons.

The Biya regime does not have the cash to pay for such sophisticated aircraft so the argument that US weapon donation to French Cameroun is largely about relations with France is legitimate. But the truth is that, US behaviour too is about more than just money. The US actually has a soft spot for countries that buck the international system, oppress and murder their citizens, and threaten regional stability. A good example is the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime that has been in power for 36 years and has contributed in destabilizing the Central African Republic and creating many Cameroonian military billionaires.  This recent US military gesture to the 86 year-old French Cameroun dictator is an indication that the US in the end, needs rogues.

For decades the US backed the Mobutu Sesekou regime in Congo-Kinshasa which killed more than two-thirds of the country’s political elites.  The US continues to support President Denis Sassou Ngessou of Congo-Brazzaville and today it’s the turn of the French Cameroun thug, President Biya who is killing Southern Cameroonians in a monstrous ideological genocide.

Towns and villages have been burned by Francophone army soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons.  Teachers, lawyers, businessmen including women and children are being murdered to make French Cameroonians the only owners of the Ambazonian ancestral land a reality all with the backing of the USA. Southern Cameroons schools and hospitals have been closed, as well as Southern Cameroons banks including service companies. Some 40,000 Southern Cameroonians have fled the conflict into neighboring Nigeria.

Over the last two years, the Francophone dominated government in Yaoundé has overworked and is starving the Southern Cameroons population, at the same time exterminating selected groups who they believe are enemies of the French Cameroun state or have the potential to undermine the French Cameroun political leaders. People who the French Cameroun armies perceive as Ambazonian leaders or even those who disagree with the military campaign have also been killed.

A sea of Southern Cameroonian women and children were killed in Kembong, Kwa Kwa, Belo, Kendem, Batibo, Ndian, Nguti, Muyenge for attempting to escape from the French Cameroun military onslaught. A majority of those caught in the Manyu and Lebialem Counties were taken quietly off to a distant forest between Numba and Kendem and were killed.  The fiercest extermination campaign is taken place in Calabar and Ikom in the Federal Republic of Nigeria with the complete and total support of the Buhari administration. Southern Cameroonian civilians have suffered the biggest death toll (over 1,500) have been killed so far with the UN registering some 21,291 as refugees in Nigeria.

Family relationships including those residing in the USA can no longer send money back home to loved ones and family members are being arrested and jailed for communicating with those in the Diaspora. The US embassy in Yaoundé noted that the aircrafts were to fight the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram. However, the Francophone Minister for Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo pointed out that the war machines will also be used to fight other related crisis.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

My fellow Ambazonians and people of the world, in mid-March 2018, Acting President Samuel Sako of our Interim Government in Exile (IG) convened in the United States of American with self-defense groups throughout our territory, consulting with their leaders to adopt a statement and action plan that established an independent self-defense wing of our liberation war—the Ambazonia Self-Defence Council (ASC). Under the new framework, all self-defence activities across the territory of Ambazonia are conducted under the general name Ambazonia Self-Defence Council’s Restoration Forces (ASC/RF).

Tonight, I want to address three categories of audiences that are stakeholders in the Ambazonia Liberation War. Specifically, I want to speak with our freedom fighters on ground zero, the people of Ambazonia on ground zero and worldwide, and the international community in the context of self-defence toward achieving Ambazonia statehood.

To our freedom fighters

We should have but one desire today: the desire to fight so that Ambazonia may live free—the willingness to face a martyr’s death, so that the path to freedom may be paved with martyrs’ blood. Friends! my comrades in the War of Liberation! Today I demand of you one thing, above all. I demand of your loyalty and self-discipline.  The blood of our heroes cannot go in vain. Their blood has paid the price of our freedom. Therefore, we cannot give up, we have to fight, fight, and fight till we reach BUEA. We must live Free or Die.

We, the citizens of Ambazonia, are now joined in a great national effort to defend our people, and our property, and to protect our interests against the illegal occupation, administration, and exploitation by President Paul Biya’s regime of La Republique du Cameroun (LRC), a neigbouring country, since 1961. Our ultimate goal is to take full control of our territory as defined and recognized under international treaties and to restore Ambazonia’s promise of sovereignty and freedom to all of our people.

Together, we will achieve our unconditional sovereignty, determine the future of Ambazonia, and join the international community of nations.

To the people of Ambazonia

Whether you are in the homeland, residing abroad, or homeless in some country seeking refuge—rest assured we will soon celebrate our freedom and independence in Buea. But freedom does not come free. We must fight for our freedom with everything we have, even our own lives, and win it from those who would take it from us or deny us our right to live. We must defend our God-given right of existence. God is with us and freedom is ours if we stand with each other. Together in this fight for freedom, no power can stop us—not the helicopter gunships, nor the state-sponsored terrorists of Paul Biya.  Together we shall beat down any mountain that stands in the way of our freedom.

By now, you must know at least one village person who has been brutally killed, beheaded, executed, abducted, burnt alive, tortured for ransom, maimed, or otherwise suffered human rights violation by La Republique du Cameroun’s government forces. The message is clear, and the meaning is simple: Act now and act fast. You must associate yourself with your village or community groups and support self-defence. Not taking action is not an option. President Biya and his government have made this clear—he has declared war on us, deployed troops to our territory, and killed our people. They will kill all of us. Therefore, we must defend ourselves until such a time when the international community takes concrete action to hold President Biya and his government accountable for all crimes against the people of Ambazonia.

We need you—we need everyone. Support in any form takes us closer to victory. Take heart, look up to God and have faith. There is no second thought, my country people: the time is now. If you do not support the self-defence, armed soldiers and paramilitary forces of LRC will mercilessly kill your loved ones and family members at home or burn your house or loot your property. Here is a mantra, a short one that I give you. You may imprint it on your hearts and let every breath of yours give expression to it. The mantra is: ‘Do or Die’. We shall either free Ambazonia or die in the attempt; we shall not live to see the perpetuation of our slavery. Every true Ambazonian man or woman will join the struggle with an unbreakable determination not to remain alive to see the country in bondage and slavery. Let that be your pledge.

To the international community

Thank you to the Governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France for condemning the barbaric offenses of President Paul Biya’s regime against our people since our decades long peaceful protest heightened in late 2016. Thank you to the secretariats of the African Union, United Nations, European Union, and Commonwealth for urging the Biya regime to negotiate a political settlement with the Ambazonian people. Your leadership and actions are highly appreciated. Why is it that, for half a century, we have never heard voices from the international community speaking out against the suppression and tyranny of La Republique du Cameroun authorities? Why is it that we have not witnessed international condemnation of the systematic disregard for our basic rights and values, and forced assimilation into a union between two countries and two peoples with distinct cultures, ways of life, and irreconcilable differences?

We can no longer remain on our knees with our hands clasped together, begging for basic freedoms and opportunities in a God-given land and internationally-recognized territory to survive, when all that we get in return is killing, maiming, abduction by armed soldiers and security forces of La Republique du Cameroun. We can no longer bury our youths in vain, we can no longer watch our girls and mothers raped before us, we can no longer watch our grandparents burnt alive in their homes, we can no longer continue to exist as refugees in foreign countries without a place to call home because of a union forced upon our ancestors. We have therefore decided to stand up for our rights, fight for our freedom, and guard our homeland.

On November 30, 2017, President Paul Biya of neighboring LRC declared war against the territory of Ambazonia, a clear confirmation that Ambazonia and the LRC are two different countries and two distinct people. The silence and inaction of the citizens of LRC is further testimony that they are different from us and that we are two different people in different territories. Since that day, LRC’s elite forces continue to use war equipment to carry out mass killings, executions on the spot, beheadings, and burning of communities—all of which have created huge humanitarian consequences in neighboring countries like Nigeria. We have therefore come to the conclusion that no one can defend us except us. And we will defend our land till the last man falls down.

Looking forward, this is the position of the Ambazonia Self-Defence Council. The only competent authority to call for a cease fire across the Ambazonia territory is the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. A peaceful exit strategy out of the ongoing Biya-declared war will come from the voice of either the United Nations Security Council or of a member state coming before it and demanding a referendum for the people of Ambazonia on our side to exercise our freedom of sovereignty.

In conclusion, the American people have shown the world that democracy and individual liberty provide the conditions in which knowledge progresses, science discovers, innovation occurs, enterprise thrives and, ultimately, people advance. This is the kind of democracy and values we envision, and for which we are fighting, for Ambazonia.

In due course, as the spokesperson of ASC, I or the deputy will issue regular statements and brief the media as need arises on the status of the self-defence activities and significant developments in our war of liberation.

By Nsoh Foncha

President Trump has nominated a career diplomat with extensive experience in Africa to lead the State Department bureau focused on the sub-Saharan region.

Mr Trump also on Thursday formally submitted to the US Senate his choice of Kyle McCarter as the next US ambassador to Kenya.

YAMAMOTO

Tibor Nagy, a former US envoy to Ethiopia and Guinea, will take over as assistant secretary of state for Africa if the US Senate clears his nomination in the coming weeks. Donald Yamamoto has been holding that position on an interim basis since last September.

Mr Nagy, who also worked in US embassies in Zambia, Seychelles, Togo, Cameroon and Nigeria, is unlikely to encounter significant opposition, having compiled a long record of service under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

His nomination, along with that of Mr McCarter, was welcomed by a Democratic senator, Chris Coons, who pays close attention to African issues.

At the same time, however, Senator Coons called attention to the Trump administration’s seeming political indifference toward Africa and its delay in naming nominees to key Africa positions in the US government.

“Simply put, the United States and the Trump administration must do a better job of engaging on this critical continent, and I’m hopeful that these two nominees will prove that they are the right people for that important task,” Senator Coons said.

Mr Trump had reportedly been leaning toward a different Africa specialist, J Peter Pham, as his first choice for the State Department job once held by former ambassador to Kenya Johnnie Carson.

GODEC

Prof Pham, a scholar at a Washington think tank, had his nomination blocked behind the scenes by a powerful Republican senator, partly due to a dispute over US policy toward Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

That same Senator, James Inhofe, on Thursday hailed the choice of Mr Nagy.

“I am confident that Ambassador Nagy, with Secretary of State Pompeo and President Trump, will be highly successful advancing an ‘America First’ policy of mutual respect, trade and cooperation. I look forward to his swift confirmation in the Senate,” Inhofe said.

Mr McCarter, a Republican member of the Illinois state legislature, would succeed Robert Godec in the Nairobi post if confirmed by the Senate. Mr McCarter has long been involved in charitable causes in Kenya and is a fluent Swahili speaker.

Source: Daily Nation