In Summary

The government of Sudan has now opened voter registration centres in three Sub-Saharan countries previously left out by the National Elections Commission.

Sudanese nationals in Diaspora will now be able to register and participate in the 2010 elections from South Africa, Kenya and Uganda. Another centre has also opened in Malaysia bringing the countries identified by NEC for the exercise to 14.

And on Monday, hundreds of Sudanese nationals living in Kenya thronged the country’s embassy in Nairobi to beat the November 30 deadline set by the National Elections Commission.

Speaking after launching the exercise, Sudan ambassador Mr Majok Guandong denied the opening of the centres was a response to the pressure from the South.

“The Sudanese in Diaspora have a right to take part in the elections which the government and NEC recognise,” said Mr Guandong.

The Government of Southern Sudan had two weeks ago threatened to boycott elections if certain conditions were not met.

One of the conditions according to the head of mission of the Southern government in Nairobi John Duku was opening registration centres in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo-Brazaville and the Democratic Republic of Congo where Mr Duku stressed hosts many South Sudanese refugees.

Mr Duku had said the South was unimpressed with the way the North was conducting the voter registration exercise that started November 1 to run for 30 days.

The list of eligible countries initially distributed to Missions abroad included Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Sultanate of Oman, Bahrain, the UK, Belgium (for all Western Europe) and USA.

Mr Guandong explained the opening of new centres was due to the government’s all-inclusive policy.

“Since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, many Sudanese have acquired identification and travel documents, which makes them eligible to vote,” he said.

He dismissed the boycott threats stating the national leaders of Southern Sudan were at the forefront encouraging people to register.

“These threats are non-existence and a figment of imagination of a few individuals,” sated Mr Guandong.

Sudan Missions in the three additional Africans countries will ask NEC for extension of voter registration period, the envoy also said. A second centre in Nairobi will be opened Tuesday to serve the overwhelming figures.

ROME, Monday (Reuters) – Government leaders and officials meet in Rome on Monday for a three-day UN summit on how to fight global hunger, but anti-poverty campaigners are already writing off the event as a missed opportunity.

With the world’s hungry topping one billion for the first time in history, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation had called the summit, hoping that leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total — its 1980 level — from 5 percent now.

That would amount to $44 billion a year, up from $7.9 billion now.

But a published draft of the final declaration to be adopted on Monday includes only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target nor a timeframe for action.

A pledge to eliminate malnutrition by 2025 was also taken off the draft, which now states that world leaders commit to eradicate hunger “at the earliest possible date”.

“The real causes of hunger and food insecurity are not even on the agenda or in the draft declaration,” said the London-based think tank International Policy Network, which blames trade restrictions for the rise in malnutrition.

Last year’s spike in the price of food staples such as rice and wheat sparked riots in 60 countries, hoarding and a scramble by rich food importers to buy foreign farmland, pushing food shortages and hunger up the political agenda.

Food prices have fallen back since, but they remain high in poor countries and FAO warns sudden price rises are very likely.

A G8 summit in July pledged $20 billion over the next three years to boost agricultural development, in a big policy shift towards long-term strategies and away from emergency food aid.

But apart from Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, G8 leaders are skipping the food summit, which will look more like a gathering of Latin American and African heads of state.

Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and are among those attending.

Get your house in order

UN officials said those dismissing the summit because G8 leaders are not taking part were wrong, arguing the aim was to get poorer countries on board in the fight against hunger.

“For me, it is not so much the participation of the G8 that is important but driving our message home to the developing countries whose leaders are going to be there, to tell them: get your house in order,” Kanayo Nwanze, head of the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development, told Reuters.

Still, the absence of many heavyweights means that another divisive issue — who should manage donors’ funds to boost agriculture in poor countries — will not be resolved.

The draft declaration urges a reform of the UN Committee on Food Security, which groups 124 nations, to give it a monitoring role and ensure aid money goes to agriculture.

But the United States, the world’s biggest food aid donor, is looking to the World Bank — rather than to the UN — to manage at least part of the money.

While governments dither, food companies are stepping up their own investments in sustainable farming to counter price volatility and secure long-term supplies.

SHANGHAI, Monday (Reuters) – US President Barack Obama said he was not seeking to contain China’s rise and called for more balanced trade between the two powers, which have sparred over currency and economic policy ahead of a summit.

Obama also used a town hall-style meeting in Shanghai on Monday to champion Internet freedom and human rights on the first full day of his first trip to China, but he did not mention Tibet or other sensitive issues that could have stoked ire ahead of his talks with senior officials in Beijing.

The US president struck a genial note after days of swipes between the two sides over trade imbalances and China’s yuan currency, which many in Washington say is so under-valued that it is warping the global economy.

“We do not seek to contain China’s rise,” he said before taking questions. “On the contrary, we welcome China as a strong and prosperous and successful member of the community of nations.”

While billed as an opportunity for Obama to reach out to the Chinese public, the meeting bore the markings of a scripted but friendly encounter. Students dressed in suits smiled and applauded politely, and laughed when he tried Chinese.

Obama used the occasion to call for human rights and greater transparency on the Internet, which is heavily censored in China.

“These freedoms of expression and worship, of access to information and political participation, we believe are universal rights, they should be available to all people including ethnic and religious minorities,” Obama told the audience.

“I’m a big supporter of not restricting Internet use,” he said. “The more open we are, the more we can communicate and it also draws the world together.”

His comments about the Internet were reported on the official Xinhua news agency’s Chinese-language translation of the meeting.

Difficult discussions ahead

Obama’s day in Shanghai was a warm-up for his summit with President Hu Jintao in the capital on Tuesday, when the contention over trade, currency and economic policies will jostle for attention along with North Korea, Iran and climate change.

Obama has said he will also raise the sensitive subjects of human rights, and sometimes-tense trade ties and China’s currency, seen by U.S. industry as significantly undervalued and stoking unsustainable global economic imbalances.

Obama noted that in 1979, when Washington established ties with the People’s Republic of China, trade was worth several billion dollars, compared to more than $400 billion (238 billion pounds) now.

“This trade could create even more jobs on both sides of the Pacific … as demands become more balanced it can lead to even more prosperity,” Obama said.

He and other senior Chinese officials have instead accused other countries — implicitly including the United States — of damaging trade protectionism aimed at Chinese goods.

A senior Chinese official on Monday made a fresh, thinly veiled criticism of Washington for running lax monetary and fiscal policies that risk undermining the dollar.

But having made their gripes clear before the summit, Obama and Hu may avoid sharp public jabs as they focus on building goodwill between the world’s biggest and third biggest economies.

Obama said both the United States and China — which together account for at least 40 percent of global greenhouse emissions — must take “critical steps” to tackle global climate change, and other countries will be watching them in the run-up to next month’s U.N. meeting in Copenhagen, he said.

Beijing has said developing countries should not accept internationally binding ceilings on emissions while they focus on economic growth and escaping poverty.

China has had a huge trade surplus with the United States, and is also the largest foreign holder of U.S. government bonds.

The US trade deficit with China widened 9.2 percent in September to $22.1 billion, the highest since November 2008, according to US data released last week.

But neither markets nor officials appear to expect any rapid shift in China’s settings for the yuan.

China’s Commerce Ministry on Monday rebuffed calls for the yuan to appreciate, signalling resistance to pressure for change.

ABU DHABI, Monday (Reuters) – OPEC president Jose Botelho de Vasconcelos said on Monday it was still too early for the oil exporters’ group to make a decision on production changes before its December meeting, as the market remained oversupplied.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet in Luanda, Angola, on December 22 to decide on its oil production policy.

“The situation is not (yet) stabilised… I think the market has, at this time, a lot of stocks… and we need to wait until the meeting,” he told Reuters.

Botelho de Vasconcelos said the market was still “a little bit” oversupplied, putting current global oil inventories now about 62 days of forward cover.

“Ideally the forward cover should be around 52 to 53 days,” he told reporters later, ahead of a speech on energy security.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last week said that stocks of oil in OECD countries remained very high at the equivalent of 60 days of forward demand at the end of September, down from 60.9 days at the end of August.

Compliance in the producer group with its output targets was currently around 65 percent, he said. The IEA, which advises 28 industrialised economies, said last week that compliance among the group’s members had slipped.

“I’m happy with compliance, I think our organisation is at 65 percent,” Botelho de Vasconcelos said.

OPEC has kept official output targets unchanged at meetings this year, after it agreed to curb output by 4.2 million barrels per day (bpd) last year.

Oil not too high

The OPEC president said $80 per barrel was a good price for oil.

“It is not high, it is a good price,” he said.

Global oil prices have rebounded nearly 73 percent so far this year, having fallen about 54 percent in 2008.

Prices have received a boost from a weaker dollar and rallying equities markets amid signs of stronger global growth.

Botelho de Vasconcelos said OPEC should also look carefully at how oil was currently priced and consider the alternatives.

“We don’t know…it is an issue that we must do some reflection on,” he said when asked if OPEC was thinking of changing the pricing of oil, currently in dollars, to alternative currencies.

A long-running debate over the currency used for commodity dealings was revived again in October by a British newspaper that said China, Japan, Russia and France were in secret talks with Gulf Arab states to stop using the dollar for oil trading.

Big oil producers denied it at the time, but dollar weakness has kept alive the question of whether it can remain the world’s reserve currency.

OPEC is projecting global oil demand to grow by 20 million bpd to 106 million bpd by 2030, Botelho de Vasconcelos said in a speech.

“Projections are based on present trends and expected patterns of behaviour, the reality may turn out to be different in an uncertain world.”

OPEC’s monthly report last week raised its estimate for 2010 oil demand growth to 750,000 bpd compared with its projection of 700,000 bpd the previous month.