Briefly

ZIMBABWE

Zambia calls summit on vote outcome

HARARE — Zambia has called an emergency meeting of southern Africa’s regional bloc to discuss Zimbabwe’s postelection impasse, President Levy Mwanawasa said yesterday.

Mr. Mwanawasa, who chairs the Southern African Development Community, said in the Zambian capital Lusaka that the crisis required a concerted effort by all southern African countries to find a solution. It was the first move by Zimbabwe’s neighbors to intervene after the March 29 elections. The presidential result is still unknown.

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has gone to court to try to force out the result of the presidential vote, saying its leader Morgan Tsvangirai has won and should be declared president, ending the 28-year rule of President Robert Mugabe.

KENYA

U.S. envoy predicts coalition deal

NAIROBI — The U.S. ambassador to Kenya said yesterday that he expected the country’s political rivals to agree on a power-sharing Cabinet soon despite their failure to do so earlier this week.

“We remain confident that President [Mwai] Kibaki and [opposition leader] Raila Odinga will reach agreement on the composition of the Cabinet. They are very close,” Ambassador Michael Ranneberger told reporters.

Mr. Ranneberger, who met the two men in the past couple of days, criticized both sides for ratcheting up tensions in statements after failing to agree on a Cabinet line-up.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also urged Mr. Kibaki and Mr. Odinga to reach a deal during a telephone call Monday.

UGANDA

Rebel leader Kony to sign peace deal

NABANGA, Sudan — Uganda’s fugitive rebel commander Joseph Kony will sign a final deal today at the remote Sudan-Congo border to end one of Africa’s longest wars, the chief mediator at peace talks has said.

South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar said Kony’s shadowy Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) guerrillas had told him that their leader was at the location and that the signing ceremony, which was postponed from last week, would take place as planned.

“The LRA delegation has assured me that Kony is in Ri-Kwangba and he is ready to sign the peace deal on Thursday,” Mr. Machar told Reuters news agency in the south Sudanese capital, Juba.

The elusive Kony and two of his top deputies are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on war crimes charges including rape, murder and the abduction of thousands of children during their two-decade insurgency.

SOMALIA

Islamists seize key town again

MOGADISHU — Islamist fighters in Somalia seized a strategic town north of Mogadishu yesterday for the second time in two weeks, a spokesman for the insurgents said.

Jowhar is the most significant of several towns that the rebels have captured in recent months, highlighting the inability of the Western-backed interim government to impose its authority despite support from Ethiopian and African Union troops.

The Islamists, who are remnants of a Shariah Courts group ousted from the capital at the end of 2006, earlier briefly seized Jowhar on March 26.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for Burundian troops serving with the AU peacekeeping force in Mogadishu said one of their soldiers was killed Tuesday by a suicide bomber who rammed a car into the gates of an AU base.

From wire dispatches and staff reports