Global briefs
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: The plot to overthrow the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has a US connection. South African authorities have arrested Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in connection with the plot. Plot leader Nick du Toit, an alleged South African mercenary now on trial in Libreville, the country's capital, told the court he was introduced to Thatcher in July 2003 by Simon Mann, another alleged coup plotter. The plot to replace Nguema with an exiled opposition leader was exposed in March. Shortly before du Toit spoke, Thatcher, a businessman, was arrested in Capetown by South African police and charged with involvement in the plot. Equatorial Guinea, a small nation on the Gulf of Guinea, has significant oil reserves. The US administration is paying increasing attention to this region, with high-ranking Bush administration officials having paid recent visits.* * * INDIA: A massive rally of the youth of the country in Delhi is being organised for 3 November by the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI). The action is based on four main demands: the right to work; the filling of all job vacancies; for a national youth policy; and a national sports policy. Secretary of the DYFI, Tapas Sinha, and its all-India president K N Balagopal Tapas Sinha said that government policies over the past ten years had given rise to a massive unemployment problem. Demands include an end to privatisation and ensuring the right to work and education for all.* * * SUDAN: Washington's threat of sanctions against Sudan over the Darfur crisis is part of a US plan aimed at destroying the government in Khartoum as it did in Iraq and Somalia, a senior Sudanese official said last week. "Sudan is not afraid of the threat of sanctions by the United States, which is using the crisis in Darfur to weaken and destroy the government of Sudan in a similar fashion in which they devastated Iraq and Somalia", said Angelo Beda, Deputy Speaker of Sudan's parliament, at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa. The US intervention in Somalia in 1993 ended in humiliation for the invader. The UN Security Council gave Sudan 30 days to disarm and prosecute Arab Janjaweed militia or face unspecified sanctions. The deadline expired on August 30.* * * NETHERLANDS: Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was described as "an intellectual" and "a moderate" by the first defence witness at his war crimes trial. Former Belgrade University law professor Smilja Avramov described Mr Milosevic as an "accommodator" who had tried to prevent the break-up of the former Yugoslavia by peaceful means. She also said the former Yugoslav leader, 63 — a former law student of hers — was an excellent student in his youth.