First Female VP Calls For Unity in Zimbabwe
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- A former guerrilla fighter elected as Zimbabwe's first female vice president called for unity in the ruling party after a divisive struggle over her nomination for the national and party post, state news media reported Sunday.
Joyce Mujuru, 49, was elected Saturday at the party's convention, where delegates also suspended seven top party officials accused of plotting to sway the vote in favor of the parliament speaker, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The election dispute was the most dramatic split in the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front since it took power under President Robert Mugabe in 1980.
"I urge them to work in the same spirit that prevailed when we waged the armed struggle against the colonialists," Mujuru said.
At the age of 18, Mujuru joined black guerrilla forces fighting a bush war from bases in neighboring Mozambique against the white-led colonial government. She eventually became one of the first female commanders in Mugabe's guerrilla army.
ASIA
• QUETTA, Pakistan -- Authorities seized 2.3 tons of Afghan morphine and a large quantity of arms from a southwestern village near the Afghan border, a Pakistani officer said.
• SRINAGAR, India -- A roadside bomb blew up an army patrol car in a pre-dawn attack in the disputed region of Kashmir, killing 11 soldiers, including an Indian army major, police said. Hezb-ul Mujaheddin, a Muslim separatist group, asserted responsibility for the attack.
AFRICA
• BOUAKE, Ivory Coast -- President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa traveled to the rebel-held north of Ivory Coast and told cheering crowds that his peacemaking efforts were designed to improve the life of all people in the former French colony and economic hub of West Africa.
Mbeki, an emissary of the African Union, met rebel leaders after talks in the government-held south with President Laurent Gbagbo.
• KINSHASA, Congo -- Militia fighters wounded two U.N. soldiers when they fired on peacekeepers sent to investigate a reported mass grave of militia victims, including child combatants, in northeastern Ituri province, a U.N. spokesman said.
• TRIPOLI, Libya -- Libya will discuss reversing the death penalty for five Bulgarian nurses, convicted of infecting children with HIV, if Bulgaria offers compensation, Foreign Minister Abdel-Rahman Shalqam said. In May, a court sentenced the five nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for intentionally starting an epidemic in a Benghazi hospital that infected 426 children and killed at least 40. The United States and the European Union have denounced the verdicts.
EUROPE
• CONNANTRAY-VAUREFROY, France -- A soldier angry about being forced to retire was holed up in an army depot with 60 tons of explosives, threatening to blow it up. About 400 residents were evacuated from nearby villages.
• PARIS -- Police ended their practice of hiding plastic explosives in air passengers' luggage to train bomb-sniffing dogs after one such bag was lost, possibly ending up on a flight out of Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris. Luggage used for the exercise Friday has yet to turn up. Police say there was no chance the explosives could go off since they were not connected to detonators.
-- From News Services
