President Trump has nominated a career diplomat with extensive experience in Africa to lead the State Department bureau focused on the sub-Saharan region.

Mr Trump also on Thursday formally submitted to the US Senate his choice of Kyle McCarter as the next US ambassador to Kenya.

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Tibor Nagy, a former US envoy to Ethiopia and Guinea, will take over as assistant secretary of state for Africa if the US Senate clears his nomination in the coming weeks. Donald Yamamoto has been holding that position on an interim basis since last September.

Mr Nagy, who also worked in US embassies in Zambia, Seychelles, Togo, Cameroon and Nigeria, is unlikely to encounter significant opposition, having compiled a long record of service under both Democratic and Republican presidents.

His nomination, along with that of Mr McCarter, was welcomed by a Democratic senator, Chris Coons, who pays close attention to African issues.

At the same time, however, Senator Coons called attention to the Trump administration’s seeming political indifference toward Africa and its delay in naming nominees to key Africa positions in the US government.

“Simply put, the United States and the Trump administration must do a better job of engaging on this critical continent, and I’m hopeful that these two nominees will prove that they are the right people for that important task,” Senator Coons said.

Mr Trump had reportedly been leaning toward a different Africa specialist, J Peter Pham, as his first choice for the State Department job once held by former ambassador to Kenya Johnnie Carson.

GODEC

Prof Pham, a scholar at a Washington think tank, had his nomination blocked behind the scenes by a powerful Republican senator, partly due to a dispute over US policy toward Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara.

That same Senator, James Inhofe, on Thursday hailed the choice of Mr Nagy.

“I am confident that Ambassador Nagy, with Secretary of State Pompeo and President Trump, will be highly successful advancing an ‘America First’ policy of mutual respect, trade and cooperation. I look forward to his swift confirmation in the Senate,” Inhofe said.

Mr McCarter, a Republican member of the Illinois state legislature, would succeed Robert Godec in the Nairobi post if confirmed by the Senate. Mr McCarter has long been involved in charitable causes in Kenya and is a fluent Swahili speaker.

Source: Daily Nation

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson voices regret for US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Johnson made the comment in a tweet on Tuesday, also expressing London’s firm commitment to the landmark agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“Deeply regret US decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. UK remains strongly committed to the JCPOA, and will work with E3 partners and the other parties to the deal to maintain it. Await more detail on US plan,” he tweeted.

The British foreign secretary, who has just returned from a trip to Washington, had earlier called on US President Donald not to scuttle the Iran nuclear deal and that “it would be a mistake to walk away” from the international accord.

He argued that “only Iran would gain” if the United States withdraws from the international nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers in 2015, which lifted nuclear-related sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Jonson’s tweet on Tuesday came shortly after Trump announced his decision to withdraw the United States from Iran’s nuclear deal with the world powers and re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The announcement came despite massive efforts by the European allies of the US to convince Trump to stay in the 2015 deal, reached between Iran and the P5+1, five permanent members of the UN Security Council – the US, France, Britain, Russia and China – plus Germany.

France, Germany and Britain also released a joint statement in which they announced their commitment to the deal despite Trump’s decision to pull out and his threat of sanctions.

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed “regret and concern” over the decision and called on Iran to “show restraint” in response to Trump’s announcement.

Russia and China, as the other signatories to the JCPOA, have warned against efforts to scrap the landmark accord and pledged to continue to honor their commitments under the deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been monitoring Iran’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA and has consistently verified the Islamic Republic’s compliance.

The Islamic Republic has always insisted that its atomic program is merely for peaceful purposes and that the West is using the nuclear case as a pretext to put pressure on Tehran.

Source: Presstv

Former US President Barack Obama says Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal is “misguided.”

After Trump announced his decision on Tuesday,  Obama asserted that it is “so misguided.”

“Walking away from the JCPOA turns our back on America’s closest allies, and an agreement that our country’s leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated. In a democracy, there will always be changes in policies and priorities from one Administration to the next. But the consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America’s credibility, and puts us at odds with the world’s major powers.”

The democratic president, who was in office when the deal was inked in 2015, further suggested that Trump’s decision would undermine efforts to negotiate with North Korea.

“At a time when we are all rooting for diplomacy with North Korea to succeed, walking away from the JCPOA risks losing a deal that accomplishes – with Iran – the very outcome that we are pursuing with the North Koreans,” Obama claimed. Iran has on numerous occasions asserted that its nuclear program is merely peaceful and not meant to make nukes.

Source: Presstv

French Cameroun and Southern Cameroons are moving slowly but surely closer to a full-scale war, with fighting and belligerent rhetoric coming from Francophone political elites in Yaoundé and the Interim Government of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has already crippled the fragile economies in both Cameroons, and it has created new burdens on neighboring Nigeria precisely in the Cross River State and Benue regions.

In a recent audio message, Southern Cameroons Communications Secretary, Chris Anu said that French Cameroun soldiers have killed hundreds of civilians in Lebialem and Belo and were developing plans to bomb Ambazonian settlements.

Southern Cameroons Acting President Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako, speaking on the Southern Cameroons Television, said the French Cameroun attacks deep inside Ambazonia amounted to crimes against humanity. Dr. Sako has also rejected any peace talks with the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government, saying Francophone leaders only understood the language of the gun.

There has not been any strong condemnation of the atrocities committed by French Cameroun soldiers in Southern Cameroons from the international community. The Southern Cameroons government has stated that it will not agree to any negotiations until the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, HE Sisiku Ayuk Julius Tabe and every Ambazonian arrested as a result of the resistance is release from detention.

President Biya has been addressing his troops via his kinsman Joseph Beti Assomo the Minister for Defense and praising them for the genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons. The escalating tensions have been ongoing for over two years after Southern Cameroons declared its independence on October 1 two years ago to end decades of marginalization and economic apartheid.

The leadership of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia pointed out that a lot of the issues were neglected and left unresolved in the 1961 Foumban Conference. Those critical issues include the maintaining of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and its system of education including the Common Law in British Southern Cameroons, a federal system of governance and sharing of the nation’s revenues.

An EU diplomat was heard murmuring privately in Yaoundé that President Biya is doing things that defy rationality.  A senior adviser to the Acting President of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia told Cameroon Intelligence Report that the two Cameroons will always need each other, but right now Biya has made things look like two people with their hands locked around each others’ throats.

French Cameroun military has employed massive firepower in strategic border points in Otu, Eyumojock, Tinta, Dadi and Ekok in the Manyu County. Social media images also shows heavy damage inflicted by troops loyal to the Yaoundé regime on Southern Cameroons villages and towns.

French Cameroun under Biya stand to suffer as the crisis unfolds. The government treasury is nearly depleted and food and fuel are likely to be in short supply. More fighting could precipitate a humanitarian crisis. The Roman Catholic Bishops of Cameroon recently observed that if the conflict goes on there will be a lot of people killed.

The fighting has already displaced refugees to neighboring Nigeria-a nation that is ill-equipped to help them. The Francophone government agents such as governors and SDOs including DOs have also made it difficult and dangerous for aid organizations to provide help for internally displaced Ambazonians.

A full-scale war between the Cameroons would pose serious problems for the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Francophone countries in the CEMAC region. It’s time for intensifying crisis diplomacy but the two countries with the most influence in the Sub Sahara region France and the Federal Republic of Nigeria are maintaining a kind of deliberate silence.

France has invested heavily in Cameroon’s oil industry, but without a proper end to this conflict between the Cameroons, that oil will soon stop flowing. France is also a longtime ally of French Cameroun’s Biya but has never worked to develop ties with Southern Cameroons leaders. There is indeed no military solution to the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

source:www.cameroonintelligencereport.com

John McCain, the seasoned senator of Arizona, says he regrets choosing former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate during the country’s 2008 presidential race, and instead he should have chosen Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent politician.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that McCain, while still defending Palin’s performance, said in his upcoming book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and other Appreciations,” that although his advisers had warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances, he should still have proceeded and chosen Lieberman as is his vice-presidential nominee.

“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”

Many in McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party.

In addition to the book, the senator has also participated in a nearly two-hour HBO documentary, both of which are set to be released this month. In the HBO documentary McCain strikingly expresses sorrow for not choosing Lieberman calling it “another mistake that I made.”

Lieberman later said he did not know McCain felt that regret until he watched the film. “It touched me greatly,” he said.

The Times reported that Lieberman recently visited McCain, 81, at his ranch in Arizona where the senator is recovering from his brain cancer treatment and surgery for an infection.

New memoir

In excerpts of his book, The Restless Wave that will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 22, the senior senator from the state of Arizona says his battle with brain cancer has given him a sense of liberation to freely speak his mind.

“I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry.”

“I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment,” McCain says in the excerpts released Monday by Apple News.

McCain, a Vietnam War prisoner, says he is bothered by the “scarcity of humility” in the current political climate in America.

Criticism of Trump

McCain openly criticizes US President Donald Trump in the book saying he seems to care more about “the appearance of toughness” than so-called American values.

“The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values,” he says in the memoir referring to Trump.

“He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” McCain writes in the book of Trump.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he is willing to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia meddling probe, but only if he gets fair treatment.

“I would love to speak, but I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly,” Trump told reporters.

“I would love to speak because we’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.

Trump said Mueller’s team of veteran investigators were Democrats, suggesting he could not get a fair shake in the probe into whether his election campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, and whether he had illegally tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation.

“The problem we have is that you have 13 people that are all Democrats and they’re real Democrats. They’re angry Democrats. And that’s not a fair situation,” Trump said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.

“I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly. Because everybody sees it now and it’s a pure witch hunt.”

“There was no collusion with the Russians, there was nothing, there was no obstruction,” he added.

Trump also brushed off revelations by his newly recruited attorney, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, that he was aware of and approved reimbursements to his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Cohen made the payment just before the 2016 election to prevent her from going public with claims of an affair with Trump.

After repeatedly denying knowledge of the payment, Trump tweeted on Thursday following the revelations by Giuliani that Cohen had undertaken the payout separately from the campaign “to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair.”

Trump referred to the payments story as “that kind of crap” and said Giuliani was still getting up to speed on his legal position.

“Rudy’s great, but Rudy had just started and he wasn’t totally familiar with everything,” Trump said.

(Source: AFP)