Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) The US Under Secretary of State, John D. Négroponte on Sunday reiterated the United States’ support for the ongoing peace process in Cote d’Ivoire following a meeting with Ivorian Premier Guillaume Soro, APA has learnt.

“We have had very fruitful discussions on the peace process in Cote d’Ivoire. We talked about the disarmament and the identification process on the one hand, and the civic services and the public hearings on the other hand”, he said.

Négroponte acquiesced that the peace process must be led by the Ivorian themselves with the support of the United States and the international community.

The envoy who is winding a one-day visit to Cote d’Ivoire brought a message of encouragements to the Premier Minister and to the other stakeholders, including the political party leaders.

“We have great hopes for better perspectives and more support to Cote d’Ivoire”, President Georges W. Bush’s envoy said.

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Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) The slowness in the implementation of the public hearing in Cote-d’Ivoire is mainly due to the financial difficulties that the government is facing, Prime Minister Guillaume Soro acknowledged during a meeting Friday with mayors and regional Council heads.

The public hearings, which were launched on September 25, target over 3 million people, including nationals and foreigners born in Cote-d’Ivoire, aged at least 13 and who were never registered by public record services.

“If we had to wait for our international partners, we would have not launched the hearings up to now. However, I can rejoice, because while some consider that it is slow, it is not blocked however”.

The UN security Council in its latest resolution 1782 about the Ivorian crisis however slammed the slowness in the implementation of the peace process which was initiated by the Ouagadougou March 4 th peace agreement concluded under the auspices of Burkinabe President, Blaise Compaore, the main facilitator of the Ivorian crisis.

Altogether, 21,000 judgements were delivered to issue birth certificates since the launching of the public hearing in Cote-d’Ivoire, the spokesperson of the Ivorian Prime Minister, Sindou Méité, told a news conference Tuesday in Abidjan.

Méité also indicated that about 6% of applications were turned down during the operation.

Cote-d’Ivoire is struggling out of an armed conflict that broke out on December 19th 2002.

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Windhoek (Namibia) A Namibian court has again postponed the extradition hearing of fugitive US millionaire Jacob “Kobi” Alexander to another provisional date of February 2008, APA learnt on Monday.

The further delay in the extradition case was granted by a Namibian lower court to allow a legal challenge against the appointment of Magistrate Petrus Unengu as presiding officer over the hearing to be heard first by the High Court.

The defense team is arguing that Unengu should be removed from hearing the case and wants Uaatjo Uanivi, the magistrate who freed Alexander on bail, to oversee the hearing.

Unengu said that it was unfortunate that the hearing could not proceed, because the court has to wait for the application to be heard in the High Court.

Advocate Louis du Pisani, Alexander\’s lawyers agreed to the postponement, and told the court that Government Attorneys will file their answering papers to the High court by this Friday to which his client will then answer.

Alexander, former chief executive of the New York based software maker Comverse Technology, is wanted in the US on several counts of fraud and stock manipulation.

Authorities in the US want the Israeli born US executive to face charges of backdating millions of executive stock options when he was head of Comverse.

Namibia currently does not have an extradition treaty with the US.

Alexander denies the charges and has pledged to invest US$14 million in the Namibian economy.

The Namibian government has previously described Alexander as “very passionate” about the country, and was funding a scholarship to interest young Namibians into science and mathematics subjects.

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Nouakchott (Mauritania) Experts from Mauritania, Senegal and the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), met on Sunday afternoon in Nouakchott to put the final arrangements to the corporate framework of the convention on the repatriation of Mauritanian refugees from Senegal.

The signing of this tripartite agreement is expected on Monday in the Mauritanian capital.

The Senegalese home affairs minister, Ousmane Ngom, who will sign the UN-brokered convention with his Mauritanian counterpart, Yall Zakaria, arrived on Sunday morning in Nouakchott, heading a large delegation for a two-day official visit.

The inter-departmental committee, which handles the issue of refugees and the humanitarian liabilities, handed over to political stakeholders his report on the preparations for the return of Mauritanian refugees from Senegal and Mali.

National brainstorming days on the return conditions and refugees insertion programme are planned on 17 November 2007.

Published by Korir, API/APN africanpress@chello.no tel +47 932 99 739 or +47 6300 2525 source.apa