Somalia president admits rapes by security forces

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) — After months of denial, Somalia's government has for the first time acknowledged that its security forces were involved in rape cases that drew an international outcry by human rights groups.

Army commanders often denied accusations that soldiers were involved in a spate of rapes, blaming the crimes on the Islamic extremist rebels of al-Shabab who wore army uniforms to smear the reputation of the military.

"Those few among the security forces who rape and rob our citizens must be fought and be defeated just like Shabaab," said President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, while speaking to military cadets at a training camp in Mogadishu on Monday.

"Criminals who commit rape ought to be opposed just like (the Islamic extremist rebels of) Shabaab," said the president, in a statement issued by his office.

He also affirmed that his government would "fight those who rape as he'd fight al-Shabab," the Al-Qaeda-linked rebel group fighting his government and the African Union forces in Somalia.

In March, the New York based Human Rights Watch accused Somalia's security forces and armed groups of raping and beating displaced Somalis who came to the capital fleeing famine and armed conflict. But Somalia has begun military tribunals in which soldiers have been punished and the number of rapes have declined since then, say residents.

"The president's commitment to tackle abuses, including rape, by security forces, is an important first step but needs to be followed by concrete action, including proper vetting of police and military," said Leslie Lefkow, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "And the government needs to appropriately investigate, suspend and prosecute members of its forces who commit crimes, in line with international standards."

Somalia's highest profile rape case was one in which an alleged victim accused government soldiers but was herself put on trial and sentenced to one year in prison for insulting the state institution. A reporter who interviewed her was also arrested and jailed one year for offending national institutions. Human rights groups denounced the convictions.

An appeals court acquitted and released the woman and the Supreme Court later overturned the verdict against the reporter.

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African forces suspend hunt for warlord Kony

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — African troops in Central African Republic have suspended the hunt for the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony because the new government there is not cooperating with the mission, Uganda's top military official said Wednesday.

Operations against Kony were put on hold until the mission's status is clarified by the African Union, under whose mandate the forces are deployed in the expansive central African country where rebels deposed a president and took the capital, Bangui, more than a week ago, said Ugandan army chief Gen. Aronda Nyakairima.

"We put a halt to operations until we consult," Nyakairima said. "We're still there and we are going nowhere until we have consulted. We're officially there under the African Union."

About 3,000 African troops, the bulk from Uganda, are currently deployed against Kony's Lord's Resistance Army in Central African Republic, where a former rebel leader named Michel Djotodia has since appointed himself president and announced a new government. The African Union forces are supported by about 100 U.S. military advisers.

Nyakairima said Ugandan troops would stay in Central African Republic until the AU clarifies their status. The AU has suspended Central African Republic's membership and imposed travel restrictions on the country's self-appointed leaders.

Kony, who over the years has taken advantage of weak governments and porous borders to regroup and recruit fighters, would get a lifeline if those deployed to catch or kill him are forced to leave Central African Republic.

It will be a "catastrophe for civilians in the Central African Republic" if the African troops left the country, said Kasper Agger, a researcher with the U.S.-based Kony watchdog group Enough Project.

"A full withdrawal of the Ugandans will also mean that the Americans have to leave as well," Agger said. "All the top commanders of the LRA are in the Central African Republic. That is where the center of gravity of the operations should be. This will only give the LRA a new safe haven."

Former Central African Republic President Francois Bozize was a strong supporter of the military effort to eliminate the LRA. African and U.S. forces use two military bases in Central African Republic for their operations against Kony, an elusive warlord whose precise whereabouts are not known.

Kony and the LRA were the subjects of a popular online video, "Kony 2012," by the charity Invisible Children which was released in March 2012 to bring global attention to his many crimes. The video was seen by more than 100 million viewers online and created international outrage against Kony. The LRA is accused of recruiting child soldiers and taking girls as sex slaves in a brutal campaign for power that originated in Uganda in the 1980s.

Although the LRA continues to abduct children and raid villages in Congo and Central African Republic, the group is not as strong as it once was. Ugandan officials estimate the rebel group's strength at about 250 men, most of them scattered in small groups that are constantly moving in the jungle to elude detection.

Most LRA fighters are operating in Central African Republic, according to Ugandan officials.

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Pope Francis forces Argentine political about-face

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Catholic doctrine considers the pope to be God's delegate on Earth. That alone might explain the remarkable about-face that Argentina's populist president Cristina Fernandez and most of her followers have managed to pull off in the days since the cardinal she treated as a political arch-enemy became Pope Francis.

But there are more earthly reasons for her turnaround, factors that have more to do with the dirty and often contradictory Argentine political landscape that Jorge Mario Bergoglio knows so well.

Fernandez had sought to neutralize the Buenos Aires cardinal's political influence for so long that she and her allies suddenly found themselves out of step with the joy most Argentines have shown at seeing one of their own running the Vatican.

For years, they had labeled him "chief of the opposition" and "accomplice of the dictatorship." Supporters of the president reportedly even tried lobbying other cardinals to turn against Bergoglio when choosing a new pontiff.

But that was before he became Francis. Now he's suddenly the pope who shares the same commitment to the poor and dream of a "Patria Grande" (Grand Homeland) that the populist leaders of Latin America have been pursuing. Fernandez announced this herself, after a private lunch at the Vatican with her former foe that had Argentines glued to their TV sets, marveling over the sudden change. "The president made the simple calculation that this confrontation was totally a losing proposition," and so the government decided to try to co-opt the Argentines' fervor for their pope, political analyst Claudio Fantini said.

In Argentina's polarized political universe, which treats everyone as either a friend or enemy of the president, Fantini called this a "Copernican shift," as if everyone suddenly learned the true center of the solar system.

And Francisco, whose sharp political skills have long been apparent to Argentines, responded with his own highly symbolic gestures.

He invited Fernandez to share his first official audience as pope and then ended speculation in Argentina that he might visit home before October's congressional elections, which could determine whether she will have enough votes to undo constitutional term limits and keep ruling beyond 2015. The president's opponents had hoped he would come in July or September, and perhaps push votes their way.

These and other gestures by Francis, 76, sent a signal that when it comes to the populist governments of Latin America, he'll avoid the kinds of direct confrontations that feed divisive politics, and instead will seek to co-opt them as well, joining forces to help the poorest benefit from society. "Bergoglio is a conservative, but his church career has always been directed toward doing things for the poor," said Fantini.

At first, Fernandez seemed stunned by the election of Bergoglio, the man whose opposition to gay marriage and adoption she had compared to the Inquisition. On these and other social issues, from providing free contraception to enabling transsexuals to change their official identities on demand to rewriting divorce laws, she had enough votes in congress to ignore his complaints. His frequent homilies urging Argentina's leaders stamp out corruption and fix societal ills were an annoyance, but not a threat to her political power.

Suddenly, the old man who lived alone in a church office building across the plaza from her government palace had become the world's the most powerful religious leader.

She delayed congratulating him for more than an hour after his name was announced, and then buried a reference to his selection 40 minutes into an otherwise routine speech that day.

She had refused for years to cross the plaza and meet with him. Now she would have to travel around the world and face him before the cameras.

Activists most loyal to Fernandez and her late husband, President Nestor Kirchner, were even more disoriented. For years, they had shown their annoyance every time Bergoglio criticized society's ills in a homily, or met with opposing politicians behind closed doors.

But Francis's election exposed the group's otherwise well-hidden fissures — and threatened to break it apart.

Kirchnerism includes human rights leaders fiercely critical of the church hierarchy's failure to openly confront the 1976-1983 dictatorship, and others with close church connections. There are activists for the rights of sexual minorities and the separation of church and state, but also Catholics who are proud members of the same Peronist party that has dominated Argentine politics for generations.

And just as some Kirchnerites were cheering for Bergoglio ahead of the conclave, others were trying to derail his chances.

The Argentine daily El Cronista Comercial reported that some officials even tried to circulate a dossier of allegedly incriminating stories about Bergoglio with cardinals before they entered the conclave.

The Fernandez government denied it, but Bergoglio's allies described a similar campaign in 2005, when the cardinals were sent anti-Bergoglio emails just as they were preparing to choose John Paul II's successor. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi called it a defamation campaign by a newspaper staffed by the "anti-clerical left."

Lombardi was aiming at journalist Horacio Verbitzky, who kept publishing allegations in the pro-government Pagina12 daily even after Francis was elected, accusing Bergoglio of provoking the kidnapping of two of his Jesuit priests during the dictatorship.

Verbitzky wasn't the only Kirchnerite unwilling to conform to the new posture.

National Library director Horacio Gonzalez took the microphone at a meeting of the "Carta Abierta" (Open Letter) group of pro-government intellectuals, called Francis a demagogue and described his election as some kind of global conspiracy.

"Every time he said something, he would shoot at the heart of the government, saying 'there are poor people and you all are provoking it,'" Gonzalez complained. He called the papal election part of "a project to divert the masses from the political processes that aren't controlled by the church."

Most Argentines apparently don't share such ideas now. A new nationwide poll by Management & Fit found nearly two-thirds have a positive image of Francis.

Meanwhile, other respected figures emerged, vouching for Bergoglio. Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel said he's in no way responsible for human rights violations. Emilio Persico, a leader of the pro-government Evita Movement, proudly recalled that Bergoglio led a mass to pray for the health of Hugo Chavez before the Venezuelan leader's death.

To help reorient the government's base of support, posters quickly appeared around Buenos Aires with the image of Francis over the words "Argentine and Peronist." Another showed the hands of both Fernandez and Francis as she gave him a traditional set for drinking "mate," an herbal infusion popular in Argentina, during their Vatican encounter. That poster carried the phrase "we share hopes."

On her return to Argentina, the often-combative Fernandez described the new relationship in almost mystical terms.

"The marvelous thing is to re-encounter each other," she said. "God made us in his image, but all of us in a different way, so that we have the option of deciding who we want to be. This is the human condition: diversity, plurality, and acceptance."

Political analyst Ricardo Rouvier put it more cynically: that within Kirchnerism, politics triumphed over ideology.

"The first reactions from this space were ideological: he's an ally of the dictatorship, a right-wing populist," he said. Then came a "clearly political presidential reaction: moving rapidly from being perplexed and possibly uncomfortable to joining forces and actively participating" in the Francis phenomenon.

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NKorea puts artillery forces at top combat posture

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea's military warned Tuesday that its artillery and rocket forces are at their highest-level combat posture in the latest in a string of bellicose threats aimed at South Korea and the United States.

Seoul's Defense Ministry said it hasn't seen any suspicious North Korean military activity and that officials were analyzing the North's warning. Analysts say a direct North Korean attack is extremely unlikely, especially during joint U.S.-South Korean military drills that end April 30, though there's some worry about a provocation after the training wraps up.

The rival Koreas have had several bloody naval skirmishes in disputed Yellow Sea waters since 1999. In November 2010, a North Korean artillery strike on a South Korean island killed two marines and two civilians. A suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship earlier that same year, killing 46 South Korean sailors. North Korea denies the warship sinking.

North Korea, angry over routine U.S.-South Korean drills and recent U.N. sanctions punishing it for its Feb. 12 nuclear test, has vowed to launch a nuclear strike against the United States and repeated its nearly two-decade-old threat to reduce Seoul to a "sea of fire." Despite the rhetoric, outside weapons analysts have seen no proof that North Korea has mastered the technology needed to build a warhead small enough to mount on a missile.

On Tuesday, the North Korean army's Supreme Command said it will take "practical military action" to protect national sovereignty and its leadership in response to what it called U.S. and South Korean plots to attack.

The statement, carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency, cited the participation of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in South Korea-U.S. drills.

North Korea's field artillery forces — including strategic rocket and long-range artillery units that are "assigned to strike bases of the U.S. imperialist aggressor troops in the U.S. mainland and on Hawaii and Guam and other operational zones in the Pacific as well as all the enemy targets in South Korea and its vicinity" — will be placed on "the highest alert from this moment," the statement said.

The North's recent threats are seen partly as efforts to strengthen internal loyalty to young leader Kim Jong Un and to build up his military credentials.

Kim "needs to show he has the guts. The best way to do that is to use the military might that he commands," said Lee Yoon-gyu, a North Korea expert at Korea National Defense University in Seoul. "This paves the way for greater praise for him if North Korea makes a provocation later and claims victory."

Kim will eventually be compelled to do "something provocative to prove the threats weren't empty," Lee said.

Tuesday is the third anniversary of the warship sinking, and new South Korean President Park Geun-hye urged the North again to abandon its nuclear weapons program. "Focusing its national strength on the development of nuclear weapons while its people are suffering starvation ... will only bring international isolation to themselves," Park said in a televised speech at a national cemetery south of Seoul where the 46 sailors are buried.

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Associated Press writer Sam Kim contributed to this report.

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Algeria's security forces to protect energy plants

ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — An Algerian official says that the country's security forces will take over the job of securing the country's oil and gas sites following a spectacular terrorist attack and mass hostage-taking on a gas installation in January.

An inquiry into the Ain Amenas plant assault blasted private companies currently responsible for site security in Algeria's energy sectors for failing to prevent it, according to an Interior Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The official said the inquiry found that the site's infrastructure "was not capable of either preventing this terrorist attack and even less so repelling it."

In all, 37 hostages, including an Algerian security guard, and 29 attackers were killed in a four-day standoff.

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Angry Afghan villagers want US special forces out

MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan policeman gunned down two U.S. special forces on Monday in Wardak province, less than 24 hours after President Hamid Karzai's deadline expired for them to leave the area where residents have grown increasingly hostile toward the Americans.

Despite Karzai's orders, the American special forces remain in the province where dozens of villagers accuse the Americans and their Afghan partners of intimidation through unprovoked beatings, mass arrests and forced detentions. The shootout, which also killed two Afghan policemen, only deepens the distrust.

The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan says it has found no evidence to support the claims of abuse. But infuriated by the villagers' allegations, Karzai two weeks ago ordered U.S. special operations forces to withdraw by midnight Sunday from Wardak province, 45 kilometers (27 miles) south of the capital, Kabul.

Most international forces are scheduled to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Wardak, like the rest of the country, is slated to be eventually handed over to Afghan forces, but U.S. Gen. Joseph Dunford, the top commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, indicated on Sunday that the troops were not leaving Wardak province just yet.

"The only issue is the timeline and the methodology, and we're still working on that," Dunford said.

Wardak has a stubborn insurgency on the doorstep of the capital Kabul and its location has led some U.S. military officials to warn that a premature withdrawal of U.S. special operations forces would open a "six-lane highway" into Kabul for the Taliban. But Afghan security forces disagree, saying they don't think insurgents can capture the provincial capital.

On Monday, an Afghan policeman stood up in the back of a pickup truck, grabbed a machine gun and started firing at U.S. special forces and other Afghan policemen at a police compound in Wardak's Jalrez district, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of Maidan Shahr, said the province's Deputy Police Chief Abdul Razaq Koraishi.

Two U.S. special operations forces and two Afghan policemen were killed and four others were wounded in the gunfight before the assailant was gunned down, Koraishi said.

It is unclear whether the assailant was targeting the Afghan policemen along with the U.S. special operations forces and whether they were killed by the assailant's bullets or during the crossfire. It's also unclear whether the incident was directly related to the simmering tensions between villagers in Wardak who are unhappy with the U.S. special operations forces and their Afghan partners.

Afghan police Sgt. Agha Mirza summed up the hostility toward U.S. special forces that others also expressed to The Associated Press during a series of interviews Sunday in the province.

"They are always disturbing the people," Mirza said, standing with his rifle slung over his shoulder at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Wardak's capital, Maidan Shahr. "If they disturb me, I have a gun."

Grizzled and gray, Mohammed Nabi told the AP that his eldest son was picked up by U.S. special operations forces more than three months ago. No one has told his family where he is or why he was arrested.

"If they don't go, we will go," Nabi said. "We will leave this place. I will set up a tent anywhere."

He said dozens of families have already moved out of his home village of Deh Afghanan because of alleged mistreatment by the special forces and their Afghan partners. He alleged that both "beat people and make our lives miserable."

"This is no life for us or for our children," he said.

Nabi said he and about 80 other Afghan men were detained two weeks ago following Friday prayers at the Kar Ka Mubarak mosque in Deh Afghanan, a few kilometers (miles) southeast of Maidan Shahr.

"For two hours, we stood in the snow," Nabi said. "One old man wanted to go the bathroom and they said: 'Go in your pants.'"

His brother nodded in agreement, and other men started shouting about their own experiences.

A carpenter sanding wood at a nearby workshop said he was stopped on his motorcycle as he was on his way to work in neighboring Dah Do village and detained for five hours.

"It was 3 p.m. They stopped me and said I was a spy for the Taliban," said Abdullah, who uses only one name.

He wiped away a few tears, calling them tears of "shame because I was beaten and couldn't do anything." Abdullah said an Afghan soldier with the U.S. special forces slammed the butt of his rifle into his neck, causing a hairline fracture of one of his vertebrae.

Tucked into the corner of a walled compound in Maidan Shahr, men from a half dozen nearby villages, including some from Jalrez district, gathered in a chilly room to recount a litany of allegations of abuses by U.S. special operations forces and the Afghan soldiers who accompany them.

An elderly Habib Noor lifted his long gray tunic to show bandages where he said he was beaten by two special forces and their Afghan translator, Zikrya. He spoke softly, his head bent toward the floor.

"I can't tell you the bad words he used against me," he said, referring to one of the U.S. soldiers. "I am too ashamed to tell you the words."

Noor leaned against a wall, wrapping his frail, lanky frame in a blanket against the icy wind that whistled through the cement block building. Inside the grimy room, several men showed letters they had written to Karzai. Their letters were endorsed by other villagers, police and even intelligence officials attesting to the innocence of the men whom they said had been picked up by U.S. special forces.

Last week, they showed the same documents to an Afghan and a U.S. general who listened to their stories and took the documents, they said. Neither the U.S. military nor the Afghan government answered the AP's request for an interview about the allegations.

Nabi's brother, Ishaq, who had been picked up along with Nabi's son, Mohammed Hassan, retrieved a tattered piece of paper from an inside pocket. He unfolded it carefully and pointed to signatures accompanied by their thumb prints and a government seal from local authorities.

On the other side, was a long letter addressed to Karzai. It told of his and Hassan's arrest in Deh Afghanan by Afghan and U.S. special operations forces. The letter, dated more than two months ago, asks Karzai to help locate Hassan, who worked for eight years as a gardener for the municipality.

"We aren't even asking that they release him. If he has done something, then let them put him on trial," Nabi said about his son. "But we just want to know where he is, to see him, and if he is dead, then give us his body so we can bury him."

Most of the men in the room were fathers and uncles with gray beards, but there was a sprinkling of younger men, brothers, including some who claimed that they too had been picked up and later released. They all showed pictures of missing relatives and recounted how they searched for them by going to local government officials, knocking on the doors of U.S. military compounds and petitioning the International Committee for the Red Cross.

The AP interviewed dozens of other people who told similar stories. Most, however, made a distinction between special forces and conventional American troops, with whom they said they had no quarrel.

Mullah Mohmmed Kadeem, a village councilor, warned that if the special forces stayed, there would be an "uprising" in Wardak.

"People won't accept it. We will protest until they leave," he said.

Naimatullah, who claimed his two brothers were in the custody of U.S. special forces, said the United States humiliated Karzai by ignoring his deadline for the troop withdrawal.

"If they don't go when the president tells them to go, it shows everything is with the Americans and Karzai is just like a child," he said. "He is the president of Afghanistan and if he can't tell them to leave, how can he help us find our family members? What can we do?"

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Associated Press Writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report. Kathy Gannon is the AP's special regional correspondent for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She can be followed on www.twitter.com/kathygannon

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