Zimbabwe PM in US to restore aid

Zimbabwe PM in US to restore aid
Zimbabwean PM Morgan Tsvangirai held high level meetings with the IMF, the World Bank and US Secretary of State to restore aid for his troubled country.

Tsvangirai says he is not walking around with a begging bowl in his hands, but is trying to re-establish ways and means of re-engaging with the West.

But no aid money is going to Zimbabwe anytime soon, as long as there are no reforms. The best Tsvangirai can do now is to plead for aid to speed up constitutional reforms to allow the country to have free and fair elections, Economist Luke Zunga said on Thursday after Tsvangirai held talks with the IMF and the World Bank.

No details of his talks with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have been released.

In his meeting with the US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday, both discussed the prospects for restoring substantial US aid to the troubled country.

"I'm anxious to hear about the plans and the work that your government is undertaking and to look for ways that we appropriately can be supportive," Clinton told Tsvangirai.

The US has not yet committed whether it will offer developmental aid to Zimbabwe. US officials say the country's democratic and economic reforms must be enacted before aid is restored.

Tsvangirai is due to meet with President Barack Obama on Friday on his first official trip abroad that is to include meetings in Europe with British, French, German and other leaders in his quest for support for reconstruction of his economically battered land.

Longest-serving African leader still rules

French and Gabonese media reports Gabon's longest serving president Omar Bongo's death has been denied by Spanish officials.

Spain's Foreign Ministry confirmed on Monday, that president Bongo was still alive.

Gabonese Prime Minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong said he had met the president as he "deplored" French media for the misinformation. Ndong pledged to lodge a complaint about the 'leaks' to French authorities.

"This morning I visited the President, accompanied by the President of the National Assembly, the Foreign Minister, the head of the President's cabinet and senior members of the presidential family and after a meeting with the medical team we can confirm that the President is alive," Ndong said in a statement.

73 year old Bonogo is in Barcelona's Quiron hospital, receiving treatment for intestinal cancer undergoing a "comprehensive health check" said the Prime Minister.

Bongo came to power in 1967, imposing a one party rule until 1991. However, his party has managed to be in power regardless.

During the time that Bongo receives treatment in Spain Vice President Didjob Divungi Di Ndinge functions as acting president.

Paris implicated in Zoe's Ark orphan fraud?

The French charity Zoe's Ark faces trial as an organization for "fraud" related to the "snatching" of 103 Chadian children in 2007, a court source says.

The group's head Eric Breteau was brought before judges on Thursday to have the charges which also include assisting in the illegal immigration of foreign children "with a view to adoption" read out to him.

Breteau and his partner, Emilie Lelouch, have already been charged personally on similar counts following complaints from five former volunteers who claimed to have been duped by the association.

The five were sent to Chad in September 2007 and told they were on a mission to help Darfur orphans, but returned to France shortly before six members of the organization were arrested on October 25 that year.

Chad's government accused the organization of kidnapping, while its members argued they were helping orphans from the war-ravaged Darfur region in neighboring Sudan. It later emerged the children were not Sudanese but from Chad and only a handful were actually orphans.

Zoe's Ark, founded by volunteer firefighter and four-wheel-drive enthusiast Breteau, describes itself as a non-profit organization "dedicated to orphaned children."

Zoe's Ark controversial plan to airlift 1,000 children from Sudan's troubled Darfur region and place them in foster care with French families was launched in June 2008 and advertised as the only means to "save them from certain death".

It admitted signing up 500 foster families to cover evacuation costs, each paying USD 4,000 to USD 8,600 dollars.

On its website, Zoe's Ark claimed that 800,000 children are at the risk of dying by the end of the year.

In Oct. 2007, the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights, Rama Yade, accused the group of hiding its identity by registering in Chad under the name of Children Rescue.

She recalled that the government warned Zoe's Ark months before that it risked breaking the law and that it had no way of proving that the children involved were orphans.

French police have been investigating the charity since July 2007 on charges of illegal adoption. It has also been revealed that French military planes in Chad carried charity members on several occasions.

France has 1,000 troops and fighter jets stationed in Chad, home to some 236,000 refugees from Darfur as well as some 173,000 people displaced by a local rebellion.

There have been accusations from various political sectors about former colonial power France being an "accomplice" in the crime.

"We have got ourselves into an impossible situation and I would like to know exactly what the French authorities' role was," said former premier, Laurent Fabius, in October 2007.

In a book published in 2008, Breteau said that both the French Foreign Ministry and the French president's office had known about his mission beforehand and backed it.