GABON-SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: US military commander to visit African oil producers
IRINnews Africa, Mon 23 Aug 2004
LIBREVILLE, - A senior US military commander and an influential Republican senator will visit oil-producing Gabon and the potentially oil-rich state of Sao Tome and Principe this week to discuss security, oil and environmental issues, a US embassy spokeswoman said on Monday.
The US delegation, led by General Charles Wald, the deputy commander of US forces in Europe, and Chuck Hagle, a Republican senator from Nebraska who sits on the Senate's foreign affairs and intelligence committees, would arrive in Libreville on Tuesday for talks with President Omar Bongo, she told IRIN.
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Shortly after Wald's (edit: last) visit US instructors were reported to be training Nigerian counter-insurgency troops in the oil producing Niger Delta. This area has been plagued by skirmishing between ethnic militias and by the wholesale theft of crude oil by organised gangs in recent years.
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Oil production has been declining in recent years in staunchly pro-western Gabon. It currently averages about 250,000 barrels per day. However, the country lies close to two rising stars in the African oil industry - Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe.
Equatorial Guinea, which the US Department of Energy lists as the third largest recipient of US investment in Africa after South Africa and Nigeria, produces 350,000 barrels of oil per day and will shortly become a major gas producer.
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http://www.africadaily.com/p/e5/6debe411a786a7.html?id=WNAT44c27af141254ca8bb7f326b6b55cc3a--------
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: No translator for 14 suspected mercenaries as trial opens
IRINnews Africa, Mon 23 Aug 2004
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The authorities originally arrested 15 foreigners in connection with the alleged mercenary invasion plot, but one of them, a German called Gerhard Eugen Nershz, died a few days later.
The government said he died from an attack of cerebral malaria. Amnesty International quoted eye witnesses who had seen the German's corpse as saying he was tortured to death.
Du Toit, the alleged leader of the mercenary group inside Equatorial Guinea, is a former South African military officer who was once closely connected to the now defunct South African security company Executive Outcomes. The company supplied private guards to multinational oil and mining companies and mercenary combatants to several governments, including Angola and Sierra Leone.
The six Armenians on trial are the flight crew of an Antonov 12 cargo plane belonging to the small company Tiga Air, which operated in several countries in Central Africa.
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http://www.africadaily.com/p/7f/13baddb5faa592.html?id=WNAT9a27e665f361e94feb4ee32f289d600c