Congo's M23 rebels say peace talks in trouble

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The Congolese rebel movement M23 has suspended peace talks with Congo's government, a rebel spokesman said Wednesday, increasing fears of renewed violence in the country's troubled east.

The rebels say it is meaningless to negotiate peace when the United Nations is about to deploy a brigade authorized to attack them in eastern Congo, said Rene Abandi, leader of the M23 delegation that was meeting with the Congolese government in neighboring Uganda.

"For us, as M23, there is a break from the talks," said Abandi, speaking by phone from Bunagana, an M23 stronghold in eastern Congo. "We will hope that the government (of Congo) will understand later that war can't solve the conflict in eastern Congo."

M23, the most prominent rebel group operating in eastern Congo, is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army last year, accusing the Kinshasa government of failing to honor the terms of a peace deal signed on March 23, 2009. Since December representatives of the rebels and the Congo government have been meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, for on-off peace talks mediated by Uganda under the banner of a regional bloc.

The rebels, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda, last November seized the provincial capital of Goma as U.N. peacekeepers stood by. That event prompted the international community to act toward the creation of a unit of peacekeepers with an enhanced mandate. The U.N. Security Council recently renewed the mandate of MONUSCO, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, for one year but also authorized the creation of a special unit expected to be deployed before July.

Following the U.N. resolution, the Congolese government asked the rebels to dismantle their movement or risk being the target of the U.N. brigade.

M23 now says the deployment of such a force could mean a return to full-blown war.

"They are coming with an offensive mandate. That's not good," Abandi said.

Tanzania and South Africa, two African countries that will contribute to the planned new brigade, have received threats from M23, which insists its fighters will defend themselves against any attacks.

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Peace Corps volunteer dies in Ghana

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A spokeswoman for the United States Embassy in Accra confirms that a Peace Corps volunteer has died in Ghana.

Zainab Mahama declined to provide details.

On the Peace Corps website, Peace Corps Deputy Director Carrie Hessler-Radelet identified the volunteer as 25-year-old Danielle Dunlap of Atlanta and said that she had died in Ghana on Sunday from an illness.

Hessler-Radelet said that Danielle, known to her friends as "Dani," was a "widely respected and ambitious Peace Corps volunteer who was an exceptional role model for the youth of Jukwa Krobo. The entire Peace Corps family is grieving over this tragic loss."

The website also said Dunlap arrived in Ghana in June 2011. A recent graduate of Brown University with a bachelor's degree in neuroscience, she focused on HIV and malaria prevention.

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Radical Islamic group rejects Nigeria peace effort

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The leader of the Islamic extremist network Boko Haram apparently has refused to take part in any possible amnesty deal offered by Nigeria's government to stop the guerrilla campaign of bombings and shootings now plaguing the country.

An audio recording obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday features a man who sounds like Abubakar Shekau strongly objecting to any possible deal with Nigerian officials. The comments come after Nigeria's government has floated the idea of possibly setting up a government committee to examine offering some sort of deal to stop the violence that's killed hundreds over the last year.

The recording, first passed by intermediaries of Boko Haram to journalists in northern Nigeria, features the man talking about the possibility of an amnesty deal, first discussed last week. The man in the recording, speaking in the Hausa language of Nigeria's predominantly Muslim north, calls the amnesty deal "surprising."

"We are the one to grant them pardon. Have you forgotten their atrocities against us?" he says.

Boko Haram, which sends messages through spokesmen and communiques at times of its choosing, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The man in the recording later threatens the lives of anyone claiming to be a representative of Boko Haram saying the network wants to accept a peace deal. A self-proclaimed Boko Haram leader said he could offer a ceasefire in northeast Nigeria on behalf of the group in January, though the violence continued unstopped.

The idea of an amnesty, discussed in some corners by analysts, came to a head in March when the Sultan of Sokoto, one of the country's top Muslim leaders, called for it. While the sultan did not speak in specifics, others have suggested offering an amnesty deal in lines with one previously given to militants in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta in 2009. That deal offered cash payments and job training to fighters in return for them giving up their weapons and halting attacks on foreign oil companies. The sultan is the highest ranking official so far to publicly endorse such a plan for Islamic extremists, many of whom fight as part of Boko Haram and its splinter groups.

The 2009 amnesty deal, however, did not stop attacks in the delta, nor halt the rapidly growing theft of crude oil from pipelines there that has caused serious environmental damage. The militants there also attacked the commodity that fills the nation's coffers while typically not killing civilians. Meanwhile, Boko Haram is blamed for killing at least 792 people last year alone, according to an AP count, and its attacks occur hundreds of miles away from the nearest oil well. So far this year, violence by Islamic extremists has killed at least 173 people, according to an AP count.

No Nigerian government officials have publicly said the government is creating a committee to study a possible amnesty deal for Islamic extremists, giving wiggle room to the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan for a possible denial later in case the idea is dropped. Jonathan, a Christian from the oil delta, has faced increasing public criticism for being unable to stop the killings.

Boko Haram says it is fighting to free its imprisoned members and install an Islamic government over Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people. The group, whose name means "Western education is sacrilege," has conducted its guerrilla fight across Nigeria's north over the last three years. The group's command-and-control structure remains unclear, though it appears to have sparked several splinter groups.

A group of men who said they belong to Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of seven French tourists from northern Cameroon late February — a first for the group. Meanwhile, a Boko Haram splinter group known as Ansaru has claimed the recent kidnappings and killings in northern Nigeria of seven foreigners — a British citizen, a Greek, an Italian, three Lebanese and one Filipino — all employees of a Lebanese construction company called Setraco.

Despite the deployment of more soldiers and police to northern Nigeria, the nation's weak central government has been unable to stop the killings. Meanwhile, human rights groups and local citizens blame both Boko Haram and security forces for committing violent atrocities against the local civilian population, fueling rage in the region.

Early Thursday morning, suspected Islamic extremists attacked a police station in Babangida, a small town in Yobe state, Yobe state police commissioner Rufai Sunusi said. Sunusi said four of his officers died in the attack, while two others were wounded. Police killed five of the gunmen, he said.

After the attack, Yobe state's government announced a dusk-to-dawn curfew for its citizens.

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Associated Press writers Bashir Adigun in Abuja, Nigeria, and Mohammed Abubakar in Damaturu, Nigeria, contributed to this report.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Colombia's ex-pres faces blowback over peace talks

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Alvaro Uribe did more as president than any Colombian leader to weaken the South American nation's main leftist rebel group and he has been among the most vocal opponents of peace talks with the insurgents. Now, he's finding that his strident opposition to the negotiations is bringing him some unsought attention.

Uribe's high-profile role in what has become a fierce battle for this Andean nation's future has drawn new scrutiny to his ties to provincial politicians, military officers and landowners accused of backing illegal right-wing death squads that killed thousands of noncombatants in Colombia's decades-old dirty war.

Formal talks to end the half-century-old conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began in November in Cuba, and a seventh round has just begun.

Uribe has been relentlessly attacking his successor, Juan Manuel Santos, the instigator and champion of the negotiations. Uribe insists Santos, who is up for re-election in May 2014 but has not declared his candidacy, is leading the country to ruin.

Any peace pact reached at the Havana talks with the FARC, Latin America's oldest and most potent rebel army, would only rekindle instability in the conflict-scarred nation Uribe led from 2002-2010, the former president maintains. Uribe vehemently opposes Santos' plan to pardon and grant amnesty to FARC commanders so they can participate in political life. To him, the rebels are nothing more than criminals.

"He's not the president of peace," Uribe told reporters Monday in his latest attack on Santos. "He's the president who asks the courts for impunity for terrorists, the president who got elected in the name of security and who is leading the country on the road to the re-establishment of violence."

Uribe has been both speaking and tweeting relentlessly against the talks.

"What democracy sits down to negotiate with terrorists who continue to murder its police and soldiers?" he tweeted last month after publishing a photograph of the corpses of three slain police on a roadside.

This week, he pointed out that rebels killed two police officers as they accompanied government workers on a land-restitution mission. Santos has refused to negotiate under a cease-fire, instead preferring to keep the FARC under constant military pressure.

Santos' initial response to Uribe's withering verbal attacks was to hold his tongue. But lately he has been returning the rhetorical fire, calling Uribe a "street ruffian" who "hides a knife" beneath the rustic poncho he fancies.

And now Colombian prosecutors have reopened a criminal investigation into accusations that Uribe formed a paramilitary death squad nearly two decades ago while he was a law-and-order state governor.

The men's feud reflects deep, longstanding divisions between the conservative provincial landowners whom Uribe represents and a more progressive urban class. The latter believes that Santos' efforts to compensate the conflict's victims and return millions of acres of stolen land to displaced peasants can address the FARC's main grievances and produce a lasting peace.

Uribe's opponents accuse him of continuing to stoke death squads that have killed thousands since they were first formed in the 1980s to protect ranchers and cocaine traffickers from rebel kidnapping and extortion. Among their victims: peasants agitating to reclaim stolen land. From January through September 2012, the United Nations says, at least 37 human rights and land-recovery activists were killed in rural Colombia.

"Uribe has a lot of unsettled scores," as do the "ranchers and businessmen who enriched themselves off land theft and drug trafficking," said Ivan Cepeda, a leftist congressman who wants Uribe in jail.

Uribe denies any association with such illegal groups.

But detractors say he successfully weakened the FARC in an alliance with shadowy groups that backed the far-right militias. More than 60 lawmakers allied with Uribe have been convicted of colluding with or benefiting from ties with far-right militias since 2006.

The case that prosecutors reopened against Uribe in January alleges that he and his brother Santiago formed a far-right militia on the family ranch, Guacharacas, in the Antioquia state town of San Roque in 1995, when Uribe was governor. Citing testimony from two imprisoned witnesses, prosecutors contend the ranch was used as a base of operations for the group, whose members allegedly committed "multiple crimes including massacres and selective killings."

Uribe did not respond to a question about the case during an interview with The Associated Press last month, but his lawyers have repeatedly denied the charges.

Uribe attorney Jaime Granados called the case "insane," and said he would prove "the whole thing is a farce."

While it is difficult to say whether Uribe's criticisms of the peace process have affected it in any way, the slow progress of the talks has only hurt Santos politically. He hasn't said he will run for re-election but has repeatedly stressed he will pull the plug on the talks unless significant progress is made.

Uribe is constitutionally barred from running again but has formed a political party that is expected to field a candidate. One potential nominee: the president's cousin, Francisco Santos, who was Uribe's vice president and now calls the current government "the most intolerant Colombia has had in many years."

That has led some to believe that President Santos wants Uribe out of commission, and that reopening the criminal case against him is just the way to do it.

Recent polls show Uribe with a higher approval rating than Santos: 65 percent compared to 44 percent, according to a mid-February survey conducted by Gallup. The same poll found 62 percent of Colombians said they didn't think a settlement will be reached in the peace talks. The poll surveyed 1,200 people and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Both sides have reported advances in the peace talks, particularly on agrarian reform, but have offered no specifics. Colombia is a country where 7 percent of the population owns 80 percent of the land, the National Office of Notaries and Registrars says, and more than 3 million people have been forcibly displaced by illegal armed groups, principally by far-right militias.

Changing the balance of ownership has been a chief demand of the rebels and just as fiercely opposed by wealthy ranchers.

The ranchers' chief spokesman, Jose Felix Lafaurie, has said the group opposes the peace process for the same reason as Uribe: No one should negotiate with "bandits."

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Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera and Frank Bajak contributed to this report.

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Pakistani Taliban withdraw peace talk offer

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — The Pakistani Taliban have withdrawn their offer of holding peace talks with the government.

Spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan says in a video sent to reporters on Monday that the group "temporarily postponed" its offer because the government had not shown a serious effort to follow through with negotiations.

He called on Pakistanis to boycott the upcoming national election expected in May, saying Islamic law should be enforced instead.

He advised people to avoid rallies held by several major parties, including the Pakistan People's Party that led the latest government.

At the end of last year, the Pakistani Taliban leadership said they were open to peace talks.

The government responded positively, but apparently little progress has been made.

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Kenyans pray for peace on day before elections

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Five years after more than 1,000 people were killed in election-related violence, Kenyans on Monday will begin casting votes in a nationwide election seen as the country's most important — and complicated — in its 50-year history.

Clerics across Kenya gave sermons dedicated to peace on Sunday, and urged the country to prove wrong the "prophets of doom" who predict violence.

A barrier to a peaceful vote is that the country faces so many potential triggers of violence: A secessionist group on the coast is threatening attacks; Somali militants could launch assaults on voters, especially near the Kenya-Somalia border; and the tribes of the top two presidential candidates have a long history of tense relations.

In addition, 47 new governor races are being held, increasing the chances of electoral problems at the local level.

Perhaps most importantly, Uhuru Kenyatta, one of two top candidates for president, faces charges at the International Criminal Court for orchestrating the 2007-08 postelection violence. If he wins, the U.S. and Europe could scale back relations with Kenya, and Kenyatta may have to spend a significant portion of his presidency at The Hague.

Kenyatta's running mate, William Ruto, also faces charges at the ICC.

Kenyatta, a Kikuyu who is the son of Kenya's founding president, faces Raila Odinga, a Luo whose father was the country's first vice president. Polls show the two in a close race, with support for each in the mid-40-percent range. Eight candidates are running for president, making it likely Odinga and Kenyatta will be matched up in an April run-off, when tensions could be even higher.

At the Nairobi Chapel, an evangelical church in the capital, three pastors took turns Sunday praising the attributes of some tribes, drawing cheers from the congregation. The Kikuyus were praised for being entrepreneurial, the Luos for valuing education, and the Kalenjins — Ruto's tribe — for their loyalty.

"Tomorrow we celebrate our cultural diversity as a nation," Nick Korir said in his sermon. "A lot of things unite us as a church. A lot of things unite us as a country."

In the weeks leading up to Monday's vote, described by Odinga as the most consequential since independence from the British in 1963, peace activists and clerics have been praying that this time the election is peaceful despite lingering tensions.

Odinga's acrimonious loss to President Mwai Kibaki in 2007 triggered violence that ended only after the international community stepped in to mediate. Odinga was named prime minister in a coalition government led by Kibaki, with Kenyatta named deputy prime minister.

The candidates held their final rallies Saturday, a day of political attacks and denials following published comments attributed to Odinga that election violence could be worse than 2007-08 if the vote is rigged. On Sunday church leaders asked their congregations to disappoint those who suspect there will be violence.

"We ask you to shame all prophets of doom," a cleric at an evangelical church in Nairobi called Mavuno told a packed congregation. "This is a country we are all proud of despite the divisions that people talk about. There is a Kenya after tomorrow."

Some 99,000 police officers will be on duty during an election in which some 14 million people are expected to vote. Kenyans will also be electing new lawmakers, governors and other officials.

Kenyatta, 51, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the country's founding president, is one of the country's wealthiest men. He studied at Amherst College in the U.S. before returning home to become a businessman and later his father's political heir.

In 2011 Forbes magazine listed him as the wealthiest Kenyan, worth at least $500 million, although he was dropped from a subsequent list because his personal wealth was hard to separate from that of his close relatives. The Kenyattas are said to own hundreds of thousands of acres of prime land across the country, a controversial point in a nation where millions do not own even a small plot of land.

Gladwell Otieno, a Kenyan who runs a think tank called The Africa Center for Open Governance, said it would "be difficult for (Kenyatta) to claim that he can do much" to tackle Kenya's historical land problem. But despite the baggage of wealth and the ICC charges, Kenyatta's team has done a good job of marketing him as "a youthful candidate" of hope, Otieno said.

"Our main concern has been the fact that he is indicted at the ICC," Otieno said. "A government led by him would immediately be paralyzed."

Odinga, 68, who has been prime minister since 2008, believes he was cheated out of victory in the last election. Odinga's refusal to accept the results of the 2007 election helped fuel tribal tensions, with many here seeing Kibaki's win as another example of the Kikuyu's overly broad influence.

A win by Odinga would make him the country's first Luo president, a feat never accomplished by his father, Oginga Odinga, who was Kenya's first vice president and himself a hero of the anti-colonial movement. The elder Odinga fell out with Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, straining Kikuyu-Luo relations for decades.

In a rally Friday in Kisumu, Odinga's hometown and the biggest Luo-dominated city, Odinga repeatedly used words like "freedom" and "change" to emphasize the epochal moment it would be for his people if he wins.

"Be prepared for freedom," he said. "This country is at the verge of total liberation."

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Talk of peace with Pakistan Taliban angers victims

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Hazratullah Khan, who lost his right leg below the knee in a car bombing, answers immediately when asked whether the Pakistani government should hold peace talks with Taliban leaders responsible for attacks like the one that maimed him.

"Hang them alive," said the 14-year-old, who survived the explosion on his way home from school. "Slice the flesh off their bodies and cut them into pieces. That's what they have been doing to us."

Khan, who is from the Khyber tribal region, pondered his future recently at a physical rehabilitation center in Peshawar.

"What was my crime that they made me disabled for the rest of my life?" he asked as he touched his severed limb.

In recent weeks, the Pakistani government and Taliban forces fighting in northwestern tribal areas have expressed an interest in peace talks to end the years-long conflict. An estimated 30,000 civilians and 4,000 soldiers have died in terrorist attacks in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001 — many at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban.

To many victims of Taliban violence, the idea of negotiating with people responsible for so much human pain is abhorrent. Their voices, however, are rarely heard in Pakistan, a country where people have long been conflicted about whether the Taliban are enemies bent on destroying the state or fellow Muslims who should be welcomed back into the fold after years of fighting.

The Associated Press spoke with victims of terrorist attacks in Peshawar, Lahore, Karachi, Quetta and the tribal areas and their families to find out how they felt about negotiating peace with the Taliban.

Khan's classmate, Fatimeen Afridi, who was also injured in the same bombing in Khyber, said he would be happy to see negotiations with the militants — but only after those who maimed him were punished. Afridi's left leg was amputated below the knee, shattering his dream of becoming a fast bowler on Pakistan's cricket team.

"If I find them, I will throw them in a burning clay oven," he said.

The push for peace talks gained momentum in December when the leader of the Pakistani Taliban offered to negotiate. The government responded positively, and even hinted that the militants would not need to lay down their weapons before talks could begin. That would be a reversal of the government's long-held position that any talks be preceded by a ceasefire.

So far, there have been few concrete developments, and it's unclear whether Pakistan's powerful military supports negotiations.

Skeptics doubt the militants truly want peace and point to past agreements with the Taliban that fell apart after giving militants time to regroup. Others say negotiations are the only option since numerous military operations against the Taliban have failed.

The biggest question — especially for many of the Taliban's victims — is whether the Taliban will have to pay any price for the people they are believed to have killed and wounded. The government hasn't said whether it would offer the Taliban amnesty for past offenses.

Many of the victims feel forgotten, saying no one has asked their opinion about holding peace talks. They have to fight for what little health care they can obtain, and there's almost no assistance for dealing with psychological trauma caused by the attacks.

Dr. Mahboob-ur-Rehman runs a private medical complex in Peshawar, a large facility that houses a prosthetic workshop and a therapy school, where both Khan and Afridi are being treated. Rehman said the Pakistani army has a state-of-the-art facility to treat its soldiers while there is little help for civilians. He estimated that roughly 10,000 civilians have been permanently disabled after losing limbs in Pakistani Taliban attacks.

In the southern city of Karachi, 12-year-old Mehzar Fatima was shot in the back when a gunman killed her father, a Shiite Muslim. The sectarian groups often accused of carrying out such attacks are closely aligned with the Pakistani Taliban. The gunshot left her unable to move her legs and feet and she fears she might never use them again.

Her mother, Kishwar Fatima, said she's being pressured to leave the hospital where the girl is being treated because there's no government assistance to help pay her bills.

Those wounded in the violence feel further victimized because many Pakistanis don't even agree on who is to blame for their suffering.

Despite the huge loss of life and property, the views of many Pakistanis are influenced by right-wing, anti-American propaganda that spawns conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks. Fellow Muslims could never commit acts of violence against their own people, they say, so someone else must be to blame. Some theories suggest U.S. and Indian intelligence agencies support the Taliban and other militant groups to destabilize Pakistan.

Some people who support the militants think the Taliban are better than many of Pakistan's corrupt politicians who have failed to deliver good governance. Many Pakistanis also say the militant problems in the tribal areas are a result of the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and when the U.S. leaves, the Pakistani Taliban will also stop fighting.

Even some of the victims aren't sure who is to blame.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for a Feb. 2 suicide attack that killed 23 people in the northwestern city of Lakki Marwat. But Mohammad Shafi, whose 24-year-old son was among nine soldiers killed in the explosion, isn't convinced the attackers were members of the Taliban. He says Muslims would never hurt a fellow Muslim.

Instead, Shafi thinks his son — a boxer who never lost a fight before he was shot seven times during the attack on an army post — was killed by Hindu agents that archrival India sent, with U.S. assistance, to destabilize Pakistan. He said Pakistan should sever ties with the U.S. to abolish terrorism.

"If my son was killed by infidels, he has been martyred and will go to heaven," he said.

Confusion over who is responsible for the deadly violence also has some victims wondering if the Pakistani government makes peace with the Taliban, will it also make peace with other militant groups.

Will the government, for instance, hold talks with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group linked to al-Qaida that is accused of killing more than 175 Shiite Muslims during the past two months in the southwestern city of Quetta?

Ghazanfar Ali lost his 24-year-old son in one of these attacks on Jan. 10 in Quetta. Another of his sons survived the same attack after three major surgeries.

Ali broke down in tears as he recalled sifting through rubble and identifying his son's body by the ring he had on his finger because his head and face were wounded beyond recognition.

"There can't be peace with the Taliban," he said. "They slaughter a son in front of his father and then chant 'God is great!'"

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Associated Press writers Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar; Zaheer Babar in Lahore; Abdul Sattar in Quetta; and Adil Jawad in Karachi, Pakistan contributed to this report.

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