PRETORIA, 5 January 2005 — South Africa will send a team of observers to the Palestinian presidential elections at the weekend, the government announced yesterday.
“South Africa’s participation in observing these elections is pivotal to the Presidential Peace Initiative and the government’s ongoing efforts to assist the conflicting parties to find a long-lasting resolution to the current political crisis,” Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad told journalists. Pretoria also hoped that its participation would contribute to ensuring the freeness and fairness of the elections that it believed would revitalize the peace process, he said. The 11-member team expects to assist in ensuring that Palestinians are able to move around freely to vote, Pahad said.
The observers, among them the head of the Independent Electoral Commission, Brigalia Bam, a member of Parliament, academics and clerics, will depart for their weeklong mission today.
The escalation of violence in the occupied territories and particularly the recent Israeli incursions in Gaza was a point of concern for South Africa that supports a two-state solution in the Middle East, Pahad said. “The government also calls on Palestinians to stop the firing of rockets and mortars. Such acts of violence are likely to imperil the electoral process,” he added.
S. Africa Lightning, Floods Kill 8
In Johannesburg, lightning strikes killed eight people and heavy rains left hundreds homeless in South Africa’s eastern KwaZulu/Natal province over the New Year period, officials said. “Lightning killed five people on Monday night and three others died on New Year’s Day near Ulundi,” police spokesman superintendent Vish Naidoo said. Naidoo said about 500 residents of an informal settlement near Greytown, north of the Indian Ocean port of Durban, were left homeless and temporarily housed in the town hall.
