In a major diplomatic overture to Seoul, North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, invites President Moon Jae-in of the South for a visit after senior officials of the two Koreas held rare top-level talks on the sidelines of Winter Olympics.

A spokesman for the presidential Blue House in Seoul said on Saturday that the invitation, delivered verbally by Kim’s visiting sister Kim Yo-jong, expressed the North Korean leader’s willing to meet Moon “at the earliest date possible.”

The South Korean president made a rare appearance in the North’s official media Saturday, with four pictures of him in the Rodong Sinmun state newspaper, AFP reported.

The announcement came after Moon hosted talks with high-ranking North Korean officials, including Kim Yong-nam, the North’s 90-year-old nominal head of state, and the younger sister of the North’s leader, along with other officials at the presidential Blue House in the South Korean capital of Seoul.

The talks, which took place after the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea, mark the most significant diplomatic encounter between the two countries in years.

The elderly Kim is technically the highest-level Northern official ever to go to the South and the North Korean leader’s sister is the first member of the ruling Kim family to cross the border into the rival South since the end of the 1950 to 53 Korean War.

Bearing a smile, Moon shook hands with each of the delegates ahead of their talks at the presidential palace and as and television footage showed, the 28-year-old Kim was carrying a blue folder emblazoned with a seal.

The South Korean president and the delegation from the North had their first face-to-face encounter at the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday and they cheered as athletes from the two neighbors entered the arena and marched under a unified peninsula flag.

Seoul hopes to use the games as an opportunity to restore regular communication with Pyongyang and resolve the standoff over its missile and nuclear programs.

Moon’s efforts received a boost when Kim called for improved ties in his New Year’s Day speech.

A delegation of US officials led by Vice President Mike Pence also attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang.

Pence, who was seated in the same box, had no interaction with the North Koreans at any point, according to US officials, and the VP did not shake hands with Kim Yong-nam while making a brief appearance at a leaders’ reception ahead of the ceremony.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency had earlier cited a senior Foreign Ministry official as saying that Pyongyang had “no intention” of meeting with Washington’s officials during the Winter Olympic Games.

The two neighbors have been separated by a heavily-militarized border since the end of Korean War.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula has been tense due to Pyongyang’s development of its nuclear and missile programs, which the North views as a deterrent against potential foreign aggression by the South’s allies, particularly the US.

North Korea has been the target of harsh international sanctions for its military program.

The tensions have seen a sharp rise under US President Donald Trump, who initiated a war of words with the North Korean leader after taking office in January 2017.

Source: Presstv

For over thirty years, Cameroon has been ruled by the Betis, an ethnic group that is mainly found in the centre and south regions of the country and which only accounts for less than 10% of the country’s population. The country’s president, Paul Biya, who many suspect is dead, hails from the south region. Over the last three decades, Mr. Biya has used people from the Beti clan to consolidate his grip on power, something that has attracted a lot of flak from other ethnic groups in the country.

Out of thirty army generals in the country, eighteen are Beti while Anglophones who constitute more than 20% of the country’s population account for just two of the army generals. Out of thirty-four state-owned corporations, Betis head 21 of those corporations while one Anglophone is heading one of the state-own corporations.

Many ministries in Yaoundé are actually being run by Betis even when the minister is not from the Beti ethnic group. Each time a non-Beti is appointed as a minister; there is always a Beti to occupy the post of secretary-General with strict instructions to monitor the minister and his activities. This has given the people of the Centre and South regions a false sense that the country actually belongs to them and that even after Biya, they must continue to rule the country. Our source in Yaoundé pointed out that this is creating a lot of frustration in many ministries and people from other ethnic groups are scared to speak up as they could be dismissed from the civil service.

According to our source in Yaoundé, a Beti himself who disagrees with the way the country has been mismanaged over the last thirty years, the Betis feel that they must continue to govern the country for a long time. He added that since the seat of government is in Yaoundé, the Betis strongly think that they can always manipulate things so as to stay in power.

Their strong desire to head the country even after Biya’s departure has already been manifested a few times through some of their actions. In 1992 when the Social Democratic Front chairman, John Fru Ndi, won the presidential election, the Beti Mafia did all it could to grant the victory to Mr. Biya who has continued to run the country as his personal plantation. He has been using the institutions to his advantage and his method of choice has been the appointment of only those who are loyal to him, regardless of their ages.

Conscious of the fact that Mr. Biya might not be recovering from his illness, the Beti Mafia has resorted to faking Mr. Biya’s signature just to implement its hidden agenda. Over the last three weeks, there have been speculations about the whereabouts of Mr. Biya, who many hold is either bedridden or dead.

Yesterday’s establishment of the constitutional council and the appointment of its members have triggered a wave of speculation and controversy. The presidential decrees establishing the constitutional council provided for in the 1996 constitution and the appointment of members of the said council are in line with the grand scheme that the Beti Mafia has in mind.

It is therefore not an accident that Mr. Clement Atangana, a legal expert of Beti extraction, who has been on retirement for more than ten years, has been  appointed to head the constitutional council. The 77-year-old Atangana was a member of the constitutional court that looked into many election-related disputes in Cameroon since 1992 and he always rejected any appeals made by Cameroon’s opposition parties during his time at the constitutional court.

Mr. Atangana will be the only person who can declare that there is a vacancy at the presidency given his position as the head of the constitutional council; something he will not be doing anytime soon, as the Beti Mafia has him under its thumb.

The Mafia is preparing to keep the news about Mr. Biya’s deteriorating health under wraps until after the March 25 senatorial elections when the current senate president, Marcel Nyat Njifenji, will be out of the picture since his term will no longer be renewed and there are no plans for him to be reappointed by those who are in control of the country’s affairs. The Beti Mafia is hoping that the elections will enable it to have one of its own as the next senate president and someone who will very likely succeed the dying Biya.

Under the country’s current constitution, the constitutional successor is the president of the senate, Marcel Nyat Njifenji, himself 83 years old and a collapsing figure who has been involved in the corruption and mismanagement that have become the country’s hallmark.

Many Cameroonians hold that if the country has to change significantly, figures like the senate president and national assembly speaker have to disappear from the political scene.

The other very old faces that were appointed alongside Mr. Atangana as members of the same council are also members of the ruling party. Ms. Florence Arrey, 69,  the only woman on the Council, has been a senior supreme court judge for years and has for decades been the mistress of Mr. Laurent Esso, the country’s justice minister who is a Biya pawn.

Mr. Esso and Ms. Florence Arrey have three children and Mr. Esso has been protecting Ms. Arrey who is supposed to be on retirement, but is still receiving her civil salary; something which makes many Cameroonians to hold that the country is being ruled by mercenaries and that the ruling CPDM is a crime syndicate.

Ms. Arrey also received her Cameroon civil service salary even when she was working at the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, for years and has never been questioned by the government for engaging in such fraudulent activities.  It should be noted that Members of the council are all members of the ruling CPDM and people who are personally loyal to the country’s president and his collaborators.

The appointment of these old and retired Cameroonians underscores the fact that Mr. Biya is not yet ready to give Cameroonian youths a place in today’s Cameroon. Besides marginalizing youths, Mr. Biya is still pursuing his policy of Anglophone marginalization by appointing only Francophones to head major government institutions. It should be underscored, at this point, that all heads of important institutions in Cameroon are Francophones despite the ongoing Anglophone crisis which has been triggered by the government’s marginalization of the country’s English-speaking minority.

But for Southern Cameroonians who are sick and tired of the gimmicks of the Yaounde government, Mr. Biya’s succession is the least of their concerns. Southern Cameroonians are still fighting for their secession and they are hell-bent on quitting a marriage that has brought them more pain than gain. There has been serious fighting in many towns in the Southwest region of the country, with many young men being killed in cold blood by army soldiers. Our sources say some of the young men killed had nothing to do with the rebellion that is unfolding in the English-speaking regions of the country.

It should be recalled that some towns such as Kwakwa in the Southwest region have been erased from the country’s map as army soldiers have burnt all the houses and sent everybody into exile. Currently, Mbonge in the same region is being attacked by army soldiers who are killing and maiming any young men they find in the town.

Despite the killings in Southern Cameroons, the government has decided to be indifferent to the plight of the civilian population and has opted for violent military action as the best way out of the conflict, though results on the ground indicate that dialogue will be a much better option than military action.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has been going on now for more than 15 months and the government do not seem to be disturbed that a section of the country is in crisis. Despite appeals by the international community for a peaceful and negotiated agreement, Mr. Biya has remained adamant.

A source at the presidency has indicated that Mr. Biya only listens to himself, adding that all his collaborators are scared of him and cannot even advise him on the right steps to take. Many of his collaborators, our source stressed, have all compromised themselves one way or the other and are dead scared that any doubts in Mr. Biya’s mind about their loyalty might lead them to the Yaoundé central prison where some of Mr. Biya’s former collaborators are languishing.

It is believed that more than three hundred soldiers have been killed during the military campaign and some five hundred civilians have been killed by army soldiers, most of whom are Betis sent to erase Anglophone towns and villages from the country’s map.

By Kingsley Betek in Yaoundé with intelligence files from Pierre Onana

South Africa’s ruling party has postponed a top-level meeting that was expected to decide about scandal-hit President Jacob Zuma’s political future, as rumors emerge that it has reached a deal with Zuma to step down.

The African National Congress (ANC) had scheduled an urgent meeting of its national executives for Wednesday evening to discuss Zuma’s future but suddenly moved it to February 17.

Instead, it released a statement late on Tuesday, saying Zuma and ANC leader Cyril Ramaphosa had held “fruitful and constructive discussions” in Cape Town on Tuesday.

Zuma, whose tenure officially runs until mid-2019, has come under pressure to leave office over corruption allegations. He was replaced as leader of the ANC by Ramaphosa in December last year.

The party’s secretary general, Ace Magashule, said the meeting’s postponement, as well as the postponement of a state of the nation address that Zuma had been scheduled to deliver on Thursday, would give them a “further chance to talk.”

Ramaphosa will give details on Zuma’s fate later in the day, according to parliament speaker Baleka Mbete. “In this day, there will be some progress, which the president of the ANC will be ready to come back to us about,” Mbete said.

Zuma’s spokesman has declined to comment.

Meanwhile, South African website Times Live has quoted unnamed sources as saying that Zuma has agreed to quit if the certain terms can be negotiated for his departure.

Opposition parties are demanding that a vote of no-confidence be held to remove the president.

Zuma engineered the ouster of former president Thabo Mbeki in 2008 shortly after he was elected leader of the ANC.

The ruling party lost ground to opposition groups, the Democratic Alliance and the Economic Freedom Fighters, in the 2016 local elections. Many within the party now want the 75-year-old president to go as soon as possible so they can rebuild the party’s standing following the corruption allegations, which have provided political fodder for the opposition.

Zuma is accused of having links to the wealthy India-born Gupta family, who are alleged to have influenced his government. Zuma and the Guptas, however, deny the allegations.

Source: Presstv

North Korea has accused the United States of “deploying large nuclear assets” on the Korean Peninsula and laying the foundation for a potential preemptive strike against it.

North Korean diplomat Ju Yong Chol told the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday that Washington was seeking to aggravate the situation on the divided peninsula by deploying nukes in preparation for a possible preemptive attack.

“In view of the nature and scale of US military reinforcements, they are designed to make a preemptive strike against the DPRK,” the diplomat said referring to his country’s official name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“US officials including the defense secretary and the CIA director repeatedly talked about DPRK nuclear and missile threat to justify their argument for a military option and a new concept of a so-called ‘bloody nose’, a limited preemptive strike on the DPRK is under consideration within the US administration,” Ju said.

The United States dropped Victor Cha, President Donald Trump’s pick for ambassador to South Korea. Cha reportedly lost nomination for the position of ambassador after voicing concerns about a potential “bloody-nose attack” on North Korea.

Months of fiery rhetoric between the United States and North Korea have seen Trump drawing criticism at home for repeatedly using highly-menacing language toward Pyongyang.

In recent months, Trump has engaged in a bitter war of words with North Korean officials, and has threatened to “totally destroy” the country if it threatens the US or its allies.

In his first State of the Union address on Wednesday, Trump struck a dire note of warning about North Korea, saying the country’s “reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland.”

Fed up with the American president’s harsh rhetoric, Pyongyang warned in a statement on Sunday that “If Trump does not get rid of his anachronistic and dogmatic way of thinking, he will only bring about the consequence of further endangering security of the United States.”

In late November, Pyongyang successfully test-launched what American military experts called a Hwasong-15 ICBM, the largest North Korean missile tested to date with a presumably long-enough range to deliver nuclear warheads deep into the US mainland.

The US and its allies in the West and in Asia engineered tough UN sanctions on North Korea last year when Pyongyang test-fired two missiles in July and then carried out its most powerful nuclear test in August.

However, many said the sanctions would not deter North Korea from pursuing its nuclear and missile program, which Pyongyang insists is part of its defense policy against the United States. Critics have repeatedly warned that sanctions would more affect North Korean people rather than its military and the government.

Source: Presstv

Nigeria on Monday assured Cameroon that it is determined to deal with secessionist forces attempting to use its territory to destabilise its West African neighbour. Cameroonian forces have crossed into neighbouring Nigeria to conduct operations among citizens, where thousands of people have fled from Cameroon’s restive anglophone regions, local sources and state officials said January 31, 2018.

Last week, Nigeria extradited Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, leader of a Cameroonian anglophone separatist movement, and 46 of his supporters at Yaounde’s request, sparking condemnation from the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. But Nigeria’s National Security Adviser Mohammed Monguno said at a trans-border security meeting in Abuja that extradition was ordered to preserve Cameroon’s unity and sovereignty.

“President Muhammadu Buhari assures you that we will take all the necessary measures, within the ambit of the law, to ensure that Nigeria’s territory is not used as a staging area to destabilise another friendly sovereign country,” Monguno told the meeting. He said both President Paul Biya and the entire people of Cameroon have the backing of Buhari in finding solution to the country’s internal crisis.

Monguno urged the Cameroonian authorities to engage in constructive dialogue to de-escalate tensions in the anglophone regions and facilitate the return of Cameroonian refugees who have crossed the border into Nigeria. At least 30,000 Cameroonian refugees are said to have fled to Nigeria following the crisis.

The UNHCR has accused Nigeria of breaching international agreements over the extradition of the separatist agitators who were arrested in Abuja on January 5. The UNHCR said most of the 47 sent back to Cameroon had submitted asylum claims in Nigeria.

Cameroon has called the 47 “terrorists” and said they will “answer for their crimes”, as tensions mount in the Southwest and Northwest Regions, home to most of the country’s English-speakers. The anglophones have complained about decades of economic inequality and social injustice at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

www.vanguardngr.com

Unrest has spread in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since October as a secessionist movement has pushed for independence.

Source: The Citizen

France condemned on Friday attacks by suspected English-speaking separatists in Cameroon that killed three gendarmes on Thursday, but urged the Cameroonian government to engage in dialogue to stop an escalation in violence.

The separatists have taken up arms over the past year in an attempt to create a nation they call Ambazonia. The insurgency represents the gravest challenge yet to the 35-year rule of Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.

France, which has significant business interests in its former colony and relies on it to fight against Islamist militants, has been careful not to overly criticize the government’s handling of the crisis.

“France condemns the new killings of law enforcement officials that took place on 1 February in Cameroon,” Foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Von der Muhll told reporters in a daily briefing after three gendarmes were killed in separate clashes on Thursday in towns in the North West Region.

She said only dialogue would enable a peaceful response to the concerns of all sides and ensure the unity and integrity of the country.

“This is a message we are also passing on to the Cameroonian authorities, in close consultation with our European and international partners,” the spokeswoman added.

Violence has flared in the past week, with armed separatist factions clashing against Cameroon security forces in several towns and villages in the two English-speaking regions after Nigeria deported the leader of the self-declared state and 46 others.

The United Nations refugee agency condemned the handing over of the 47 people, saying most of them had submitted asylum claims and their forced return was in violation of international refugee law.

More than 43,000 Cameroonians have fled as refugees to Nigeria to escape the government crackdown on the separatists, say local aid officials. The majority are in Nigeria’s Cross River state, which borders southwest Cameroon.

REUTERS

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel has issued a warning to Israel over the EU’s rising “frustration” with the Tel Aviv regime’s policies toward the future of a so-called two-state solution.

Speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Gabriel noted that several members of the Israeli cabinet were “explicitly against the two-state solution.”

He added that such a solution “has always been the foundation of our engagement for Israeli-Palestinian peace and for the large amount of funding” from Germany and the EU.

“We need to know if Israel is not supporting a negotiated solution to this conflict anymore,” he added.

“These – at best mixed – signals do not go unnoticed in Europe, where there is clearly growing frustration with Israel’s actions,” he added.

Referring to an increase in concerns about violence, hatred, and Israel’s continued settlement construction, he said, “It is increasingly difficult for people like me to explain to them the reasons why our support for Israel must persist.”

Gabriel also broached the subject of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli capital.

“The Americans are taking your side more clearly than ever before. But is this really only a good thing?,” he asked.

On December 6, 2017, Trump announced his decision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital and relocate the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the occupied city.

Referring to the US’ past desire to act as a mediator in the Palestinian-Israeli talks, he asked, “Can the Americans still play such a role if they take sides so openly? Will others try to step into their shoes?”

Earlier this month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Trump’s so-called Middle East peace efforts are the “slap of the century” after his recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s capital

Source: Presstv

Governments around the world are increasingly shutting down internet access in an apparent attempt to silence discontent and dissent, activists say. In 2017, internet access was cut off more than 80 times around the world, up from 56 times the year before, drawing concerns from digital rights activists.

“We do see this as evidence for a global trend in the wrong direction,” Peter Micek of Access Now told Al Jazeera. One of the countries that have seen several shutdowns in the past year is Cameroon. People in the Anglophone region of the West African nation erupted in protests against the imposition of the French language, which is spoken by the majority of the population.

For four months now, access to social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter and messaging services like WhatsApp has been blocked in the English-speaking parts of the country. The blockage, implemented in early October after protests against the Cameroonian government, was the second shutdown in Anglophone regions in 2017. From January to April, all internet access was cut.

The United Nations, human rights organisations, and even the pope condemned the first shutdown. “Rather than dialogue, the government embarked on a crackdown and shutting down the internet was a way of stopping the world from seeing or hearing about the atrocities being committed and stopping information flow between groups planning peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience,” Cameroonian human rights activist Judith Nwana told Al Jazeera.

For Nwana, the issue goes further than her home country. According to her, governments that feel threatened can use the internet as another repressive tool, with no consequences. “Every time I hear of an episode of internet shutdown I feel very frustrated. They are becoming more frequent, which reflects the fact that governments know they can get away with it with no repercussions,” she said.

Nwana’s claim that shutdowns are happening more often is backed up by research from the Brookings Institute and Access Now. For people in Iran, the power authorities have over the internet became apparent again in December when protesters took to the streets. Social media and messaging apps were blocked by the government to prevent demonstrators from organising.

Micek from Access Now said internet shutdowns to suppress peaceful demonstrations are a slippery slope. “Edward Snowden sent out a tweet last year which stated that once shutdowns become the norm in places like Cameroon and nobody says anything about it, this type of behaviour tends to spread to other places,” Micek said.

And when a country orders a shutdown of the internet, there is not much that can be done by its citizens, private companies, or the international community.

What can the UN do if your country cuts the internet?

“There should be a way of pressuring or sanctioning the perpetrators so shutdowns can be lifted as soon as possible. Failing that, it should be a case of putting that government to shame and under pressure through media coverage, advocacy and diplomacy,” Nwana said.

Micek said he thinks the only option to get the internet switched back on is to hit blocking countries where it hurts, namely their wallets.

“The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a loan of hundreds of millions of dollars to Cameroon, which came shortly after the first shutdown in January 2017. What message does this send when an international finance institution throws treasure at governments that clearly disrespect the rights of its citizens?” Micek said.

“Many institutions just need to quietly express their frustration and put down some real consequences, make the governments feel the pain that the citizens are put through.”

But Cameroonians are not willing to wait for others to intervene, so they have recently taken authorities to the Cameroonian Constitutional and High courts with the help of Access Now and Internet Sans Frontieres.

The lawsuit says Anglophones are being discriminated against since the shutdowns are only happening in English-speaking areas. It also states the ban is in violation of several international human rights charters signed by Cameroon.

“Depriving people of the internet interferes with a range of fundamental human rights,” the lawsuit states, citing the United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights. The case comes several months before the October elections, which may be heavily affected by the closures, according to Nwana.

She is not sure if elections should even take place at all given the current state of the country, she said.

“For successful elections anytime this year in Cameroon, registration, campaigning and dissemination of information should be going on right now. Most people, especially the young who form the larger proportion of the population, get their information via social media,” Nwana said.

“How are elections going to be planned or made possible in those regions with internet restrictions right now?”

Micek agreed that having elections under the current circumstances might not be a good idea, not just for Cameroon, but for any country that shuts down the internet. “When you have an entire population that’s silenced and shut out of political discourse, that’s not a recipe for a healthy and stable democracy.”

Source: Aljazeera

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has stepped down after criticism by US President Donald Trump, who is being investigated for possible collusion with Russia in the wake of his 2016 victory.

Sources told Politico on Monday that the 49-year-old official was going on “terminal leave,” which means he will be on payroll by the time he retires.

The decision was made amid the ongoing Russia probe by special counsel Robert Mueller, which has implicated some key figures in Trump’s inner circle.

The president, who fired former FBI Director James Comey last year, has complained that McCabe is biased.

Like Comey, McCabe had been urged by Trump to drop the investigation into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

“How can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, along with leakin’ James Comey, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation?” Trump tweeted last month.

In another tweet, the Republican president said, “FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is racing the clock to retire with full benefits. 90 days to go?!!!”

After reports emerged that McCabe is stepping down, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that Trump had nothing to do with it.

“I can say that the president wasn’t a part of this decision-making process,” she said, yet asserting that “the president stands by his previous comments” about the FBI deputy director.

McCabe was tasked with overseeing Hillary Clinton’s use of private email servers as the secretary of state, a scandal that dominated the 2016 presidential election in favor of the New York billionaire.

Source: Presstv