http://news.yahoo.com/worries-grow-east-congo-fighter-buildup-180324679.html   Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup By By KRISTA LARSON | Associated Press – 19 hrs ago Email0 Share0 Share0 Print DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Aid workers warned Wednesday that armed groups are setting up new front lines in and around the city of Goma in eastern Congo, where the U.N. said it now has documented at least 126 rape cases last month. Thousands of fighters from the M23 rebel group withdrew several weeks ago from Goma, and the fighters have since taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government. However, residents in Goma say M23 and other armed fighters are now positioning themselves in an around the city — including inside camps for people displaced by the violence. The arrival of several thousand fighters within the last week is prompting fear among civilians, who already have experienced years of fighting and rebellions, said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam's humanitarian coordinator there. "They are very concerned — people are seeing this and they don't know what it means," he said. "I think what everyone is scared about is that it seems like people are ramping up, ramping up but for what purpose?" Oxfam warns that more than 1 million people could come under attack if violence again flares in Goma, where more than 100,000 people already have fled from elsewhere in the region. "Goma is typically the last refuge safe haven and now it's being directly called into question. If Goma falls in a big battle, where are people going to go?" Riebl said. "This is very, very disconcerting because you have a population of over 1 million people and if war were to break out, we're looking at a horrific situation." The M23 rebel group, which is believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April. They took control of many villages and towns in the mineral-rich east over the last seven months, culminating in the seizure of Goma on Nov. 20. It took days of negotiations and intense international pressure, including from the U.N., for the thousands of fighters from M23 to finally withdraw from the regional capital. The U.N. mission says it's received allegations of serious rights violations, including killings and wounding of civilians, rape, looting, and forced recruitment of children, by elements of the M23 rebels in Goma and neighboring areas. Congo's armed forces are also blamed for a series of attacks as they fled Goma in retreat in late November. The U.N. said Tuesday it now has been able to document at least 126 rapes during that period in the Minova area, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Goma. U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said that two Congolese soldiers so far have been arrested in connection with the rapes, while seven others had been implicated in looting in the area. "The Congolese Armed Forces have started investigating those human rights violations," he said. "The U.N. Mission is supporting the military justice procedure in conducting thorough investigations into these allegations to ensure that the perpetrators are identified and held accountable." Rape has long been used as a brutal weapon of war in eastern Congo, where both soldiers and various armed groups use sexual violence to intimidate, punish and control the population. Explore Related Content 1 - 4 of 20 prevnext Go to page 1 Go to page 2 Go to page 3 Go to page 4 Go to page 5 Play Video Government puts boots on the ground … Reuters Videos Internally displaced Congolese waits … UN: 126 rape cases amid eastern Congo … KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The United Nations says at least 126 cases of rape took place in eastern Congo … Full Story »UN: 126 rape cases amid eastern Congo fighting Associated Press Play Video Goma residents relieved by withdrawal … Reuters Videos

http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/person-of-the-year-barack-obama/   2012 Person of the Year: Barack Obama, the President By Michael SchererDec. 19, 2012 Share inShare445 Nadav Kander for TIME Related The Data Miners: Tech Secrets From Obama's Re-Election Geek Squad Four Years of Speeches, One Signature Phrase The Most Tweeted Photo Ever From Election Night to Newtown: Never-Before-Seen Photos of President Obama Email Print Share Facebook Twitter Tumblr LinkedIn StumbleUpon Reddit Digg Mixx Delicious Google+ Comment Follow @TIME Twenty-seven years after driving from New York City to Chicago in a $2,000 Honda Civic for a job that probably wouldn't amount to much, Barack Obama, in better shape but with grayer hair, stood in the presidential suite on the top floor of the Fairmont Millennium Park hotel as flat screens announced his re-election as President of the United States. The networks called Ohio earlier than predicted, so his aides had to hightail it down the hall to join his family and friends. They encountered a room of high fives and fist pumps, hugs and relief. The final days of any campaign can alter the psyches of even the most experienced political pros. At some point, there is nothing to do but wait. Members of Obama's team responded in the only rational way available to them — by acting irrationally. They turned neckties into magic charms and facial hair into a talisman and compulsively repeated past behaviors so as not to jinx what seemed to be working. In Boca Raton, Fla., before the last debate, they dispatched advance staff to find a greasy-spoon diner because they had eaten at a similar joint before the second debate, on New York's Long Island. They sent senior strategist David Axelrod a photograph of the tie he had to find to wear on election night: the same one he wore in 2008. Several staffers on Air Force One stopped shaving, like big-league hitters in the playoffs. Even the President succumbed, playing basketball on Election Day at the same court he played on before winning in 2008. (Inside the White House: Never-Before-Seen Photos) But now it was done, and reason had returned. Ever since the campaign computers started raising the odds of victory from near even to something like surefire, Obama had been thinking a lot about what it meant to win without the lightning-in-a-bottle quality of that first national campaign. The Obama effect was not ephemeral anymore, no longer reducible to what had once been mocked as "that hopey-changey stuff." It could be measured — in wars stopped and started; industries saved, restructured or reregulated; tax cuts extended; debt levels inflated; terrorists killed; the health-insurance system reimagined; and gay service members who could walk in uniform with their partners. It could be seen in the new faces who waited hours to vote and in the new ways campaigns are run. America debated and decided this year: history would not record Obama's presidency as a fluke. Cover Photograph by Nadav Kander for TIME So after his staff arrived, he left his family in the main room of the suite and stepped out to talk with his three top advisers, Axelrod, political strategist David Plouffe and Jim Messina, his campaign manager. He wanted to tell them what this victory meant, because it was very different the second time. "This one's more satisfying than '08," he said. "It wasn't just about what I was going to do as President. It's what I've done." In the end, the outcome would not even be very close, and this realization was sinking in, unleashing something, dropping a shield he had been carrying for a long time. Over three days in November, the man known for his preternatural cool won re-election and cried twice in public. And then, trying to find meaning in a tragedy in Connecticut, he did it again, all but breaking down in the White House Briefing Room. (Obama Photo Diary: 48 Hours with the President) In mid-December, as Obama settles into one of the Oval Office's reupholstered chairs — brown leather instead of Bush's blue and gold candy stripes — the validation of Election Day still hovers around him, suggesting that his second four years in office may turn out to be quite different from his first. Beyond the Oval Office, overwhelming challenges remain: deadlocked fiscal-cliff talks; a Federal Reserve that predicts years of high unemployment; and more unrest in places like Athens, Cairo and Damascus. But the President seems unbound and gives inklings of an ambition he has kept in check ever since he arrived at the White House to find a nation in crisis. He leans back, tea at his side, legs crossed, to explain what he thinks just happened. "It was easy to think that maybe 2008 was the anomaly," he says. "And I think 2012 was an indication that, no, this is not an anomaly. We've gone through a very difficult time. The American people have rightly been frustrated at the pace of change, and the economy is still struggling, and this President we elected is imperfect. And yet despite all that, this is who we want to be." He smiles. "That's a good thing." Bjarne Jonasson for TIME The Campaign Team: David Simas ran Obama's opinion-research team, including focus groups; Stephanie Cutter managed the daily effort to defend Obama and dismantle Romney; David Axelrod, co-author of the Obama campaign story, oversaw the entire strategy from Chicago; Jim Messina, the campaign manager, designed, built and ran the whole campaign from scratch; Jim Margolis, the TV adman, relentlessly bombarded swing-state airwaves for months; Jeremy Bird, the grassroots organizer, created a smarter, larger Obama army than in 2008 Two years ago, Republicans liked to say that the only hard thing Obama ever did right was beating Hillary Clinton in the primary, and in electoral terms, there was some truth to that. In 2012 the GOP hoped to cast him as an inspiring guy who was not up to the job. But now we know the difference between the wish and the thing, the hype and the man in the office. He stands somewhat shorter, having won 4 million fewer votes and two fewer states than in 2008. But his 5 million-vote margin of victory out of 129 million ballots cast shocked experts in both parties, and it probably would have been higher had so much of New York and New Jersey not stayed home after Hurricane Sandy. He won many of the toughest battlegrounds walking away: Virginia by 4 points, Colorado by 5 and the lily white states of Iowa and New Hampshire by 6. He untied Ohio's knotty heartland politics, picked the Republican lock on Florida Cubans and won Paul Ryan's hometown of Janesville, Wis. (Those last two data points especially caught the President's interest.) He will take the oath on Jan. 20 as the first Democrat in more than 75 years to get a majority of the popular vote twice. Only five other Presidents have done that in all of U.S. history. Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next Read more: http://poy.time.com/2012/12/19/person-of-the-year-barack-obama/#ixzz2FbMn3Lmo

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/12/18/readout-president-s-call-president-kagame   Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases   The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release December 18, 2012 Readout of the President's Call with President Kagame President Obama spoke today with President Kagame to discuss the situation in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  President Obama underscored that any support to the rebel group M23 is inconsistent with Rwanda's desire for stability and peace. President Obama emphasized to President Kagame the importance of permanently ending all support to armed groups in the DRC, abiding by the recent commitments he made in Kampala along with Presidents Kabila and Museveni, and reaching a transparent and credible political agreement that includes an end to impunity for M23 commanders and others who have committed serious human rights abuses.  President Obama expressed his belief that from this crisis should emerge a political agreement that addresses the underlying regional security, economic, and governance issues while upholding the DRC's sovereignty and territorial integrity and noted that he had also delivered this message to President Kabila.  President Obama and President Kagame also discussed the longstanding governance problems in the DRC.  President Obama welcomed President Kagame's commitment to moving forward in finding a peaceful solution for eastern DRC.

Obama tells Rwanda: end DRC rebel support | The Australian

http://m.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/obama-tells-rwanda-end-drc-rebel-support/story-fn3dxix6-1226540447071

Obama tells Rwanda: end DRC rebel support

• December 19, 2012 2:42PM

US President Barack Obama has called on Rwandan President Paul Kagame to end all support for rebels in the conflict-wracked Democratic Republic of Congo.

The White House issued the strongly worded statement about the leaders' call after Washington imposed sanctions on two top leaders of the M23 rebel group, saying they had used child soldiers and singled out children as targets.

In his telephone conversation with Kagame, Obama "underscored that any support to the rebel group M23 is inconsistent with Rwanda's desire for stability and peace", the White House said on Tuesday.

Obama stressed to Kagame "the importance of permanently ending all support to armed groups in the DRC, abiding by the recent commitments he made ... and reaching a transparent and credible political agreement that includes an end to impunity for M23 commanders and others" who committed rights abuses, it said.

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The DR Congo government has been battling the M23, former army soldiers who UN experts say are backed by Rwanda, since they launched a mutiny in April.

Several of the group's leaders have been hit by UN sanctions over alleged atrocities.

Obama called for a political agreement in DR Congo that "addresses the underlying regional security, economic and governance issues while upholding the DRC's sovereignty and territorial integrity".

The White House said he had delivered the same message to DRC President Joseph Kabila.

During their talks, Obama and Kagame also discussed the DRC's "longstanding governance problems", according to the White House.

"President Obama welcomed President Kagame's commitment to moving forward in finding a peaceful solution for eastern DRC," it added.

Also on Tuesday, the United States launched a fresh appeal for the arrest and prosecution of two rebel leaders from Rwanda and DR Congo wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

Sylvestre Mudacumura, the head of Rwanda's main Hutu rebel group and DR Congo's Bosco Ntaganda, an ex-general who spurred the ongoing mutiny in the east, are both the subject of outstanding ICC warrants.

US hits more DRC rebel leaders with sanctions : News-africareview.com

http://www.africareview.com/News/US-hits-more-DRC-rebel-leaders-with-sanctions/-/979180/1647124/-/50r6l0/-/index.html

US hits more DRC rebel leaders with sanctionsBy AFP | Tuesday, December 18  2012 at  19:29

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The head of the rebel M23 group in DR Congo, Col Sultani Makenga. The US has imposed sanctions on two top M23 officials saying they both made use of child soldiers and singled out children as targets. FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

The US set sanctions Tuesday on two top officials of the M23 rebels in DR Congo, saying they both made use of child soldiers and singled out children as targets.

The US Treasury said Baudoin Ngaruye and Innocent Kaina are senior leaders of the Mouvement du 23 Mars(M23) militants, who control part of DR Congo's turbulent east.

The Treasury said they were listed under US financial sanctions "for their involvement in the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the conflict in the DRC and for being leaders of a group that is impeding the disarmament, repatriation, or resettlement of combatants".

It also accused Ngaruye of targeting children in the conflict in DR Congo, "including through killing, maiming, and sexual violence which violate international law".

Both were put on a travel blacklist and assets freeze list by the UN Security Council DRC Sanctions Committee on November 30.

"M23 leaders Ngaruye and Kaina are responsible for carrying our terrible acts of violence against civilians and children in the DRC," said Adam Szubin, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Treasury.

In November, the Treasury also set sanctions on M23 chief Sultani Makenga.

The sanctions freeze any assets in the United States or US jurisdiction of those listed, and forbids any Americans from doing business with them.