Briefly

ZAMBIA

Ex-president wants observers at his trial

LUSAKA — Ex-President Frederick Chiluba has asked for foreign observers at his trial on corruption charges, saying he will not get a fair hearing because the government is intimidating judges.

Mr. Chiluba wrote to the Commonwealth, the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, saying he wants legal observers to ensure that proceedings are not influenced by politics, his aide said.

Mr. Chiluba faces 199 counts of theft of $36 million in public funds during his 10-year rule, which ended in 2001, after he had served the two five-year terms allowed by the constitution.

UGANDA

African Union vows to intervene in wars

KAMPALA — The African Union pledged yesterday, after a mission to Uganda’s war-torn northern area, to play a “more robust” role in ending conflicts on the continent “to guard against a repeat of incidents similar to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.”

“We feel ashamed that Africa is generating all these conflicts, and wonder why the people of Africa are not committed to ending them,” said Said Djinnit, AU commissioner for peace and security.

“The AU has more mandate than before. We are going to start intervening,” he said after a visit to northern Uganda, where the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels have been waging a particularly brutal war for nearly 20 years.

EGYPT

Blue Nile rafters reach Mediterranean

CAIRO — Two American rafters rowed into the Mediterranean port of Alexandria yesterday after braving rapids, crocodiles and hippos on an epic trip down the world’s longest river to complete one of man’s last great challenges.

Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown are the first people to have rafted the full length of the Blue Nile — more than 3,125 miles — starting in impoverished and remote Ethiopia, passing through Sudan and then crossing Egypt.

Weekly notes …

Rwanda’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday it has asked the United Nations to protect its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Hutu rebels opposed to the Tutsi-led regime in Kigali are based. Kigali sent troops to the DRC in 1996 and 1998, citing a need to neutralize Hutu rebels who perpetrated Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. … South African President Thabo Mbeki retained embattled Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in a Cabinet reshuffle yesterday. Activists call the 63-year-old minister “Dr. No” for her long refusal to approve life-prolonging antiretroviral drugs amid the world’s worst AIDS crisis.

From wire dispatches and staff reports