Africans fleeing Libya say they were attacked, Posted by Meosha Eaton

* Africans accused of being mercenaries
* Evacuees robbed of phones and belongings
* Libya a stepping stone on migrants' route to Europe

(Adds quotes from Nigerian evacuees, background)

By Wangui Kanina and Abraham Archiga


NAIROBI/ABUJA, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Kenyans and Nigerians fleeing unrest in Libya said on Monday they faced attacks and hostility from Libyan citizens and officials who branded them as mercenaries supporting Muammar Gaddafi's rule. A Kenya Airways flight landed in Nairobi with 90 Kenyans on board, and 64 other people from South Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Burundi, officials said.

Nigeria said it had flown 1,035 of its citizens back to the capital Abuja on two chartered flights on Sunday, with about 1,000 more to follow in the coming days. "We were being attacked by local people who said that we were mercenaries killing people. Let me say that they did not want to see black people," Julius Kiluu, a 60-year-old building supervisor who arrived back in Nairobi, told Reuters. "Our camp was burnt down, and we were assisted by the Kenyan embassy and our company to get to the airport."

Libya's former ambassador to India, Ali-al-Essawi, told Reuters last week African mercenaries were being used by Libya to crush protests, prompting some army troops to switch sides to the opposition. Another Kenyan worker said government officials were confiscating mobile phones, tearing open bags and throwing their contents on to piles at the packed airport in Tripoli.

"When they saw a black person, they immediately saw a mercenary, and if you dared use your telephone in public, it was grabbed and the SIM card removed. If your telephone was cheap you got it back, but if it was expensive it was pocketed," said Kenyan worker Francis Ndung'u. Nigerians arriving in Abuja told similar tales. "We are all slaves in the hands of the government over there," said one returnee, James Ugochuku. "Nigerians are hiding inside the bush. They don't eat, they die because if they come out, they kill them."


MIGRANT ROUTE
Libya is a stepping stone on one of the oldest and most dangerous migration and smuggling routes to Europe. Thousands of people from countries including Senegal, Mali, Ghana and Nigeria have tried in recent years to cross the desert in the hope of reaching Italy or Spain's southern shores, a perilous journey of about 40 days by truck from Agadez in northern Niger to Sabha in southern Libya.

Besides being a gateway to Europe, the north African country offers higher wages for low-skilled work and higher prices for tobacco smuggled through Benin or Nigeria, and there is still a thriving black market trade along its ancient desert routes. The Nigerian authorities suspect some of the returnees may have travelled illegally, and NEMA has set up a camp in Abuja where they will be accommodated and screened for valid travel documents before being discharged.

Muhammad Sani-Sidi, head of Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency, told Reuters it was a voluntary evacuation and the 2,000 were Nigerians who had registered a desire to leave with their embassy in Tripoli. He estimated there were 10,000 Nigerians in Libya. Antony Mwaniki, Kenya's ambassador to Libya, was among those on the flight to Nairobi.

"The situation in Tripoli right now is calm ... but it would be difficult to know what will happen today, tomorrow or in a few days' time, so it was paramount and critical that we leave," he told reporters at Nairobi airport. Many Kenyans said they would return to Libya if it stabilised because they were earning good money in the North African country's construction sector.
"If there is peace tomorrow I will go back, there are no jobs here and I was making a good salary," Kiluu said.

(Editing by David Clarke and Nick Tattersall)

Tunisian Industry and Technology Minister resigns, Posted by Meosha Eaton

TUNIS, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Tunisian Industry and Technology Minister Mohamed Afif Chelbi has resigned from the government, the official TAP news agency reported on Monday.

Chelbi was one of only two remaining ministers who served in the cabinet under ousted President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi, who held the same post under Ben Ali, stepped down on Sunday.
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(Reporting by Tarek Amara; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Tim Pearce)

Egypt's Moussa indicates will run for president, Posted by Meosha Eaton

* Referendum on constitutional reform expected in March
* Military seen lifting law that curbed political parties
* US senator: "Great country, great history, great future"

(Recasts with Amr Moussa)

By Marwa Awad

CAIRO, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Veteran Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa said on Sunday he intends to run for president, a post held for three decades by Hosni Mubarak until he was toppled from power by a mass uprising this month.

Moussa, 74, and Arab League secretary general for a decade, said in a statement it was his intention to run for the post but would make a decision later once constitutional amendments are finalised that will open up competition for the job. The military council, in power since Mubarak's ouster on Feb. 11, is expected to call a referendum on the constitutional changes for March, Sobhi Saleh, a lawyer who helped draft them said on Sunday. It would announce the date this week, he said.

It is also set to cancel a law which gave Mubarak's administration the power to decide who was allowed to form a party, Saleh, a member of the 10-man judicial committee appointed by the military council, told Reuters. Both steps will be big milestones on the road to elections, which officials have signaled could happen within months. Egyptians hope for a new democratic era, though some are concerned the transition from decades of autocracy is too fast. "The military council hands power to the people in a gradual process," Saleh said. "The parties law will be cancelled."

The reforms will limit a leader's time in the presidency to two four-year terms and ensure judicial oversight of elections. Mubarak was in his fifth, six-year term when he was toppled. The proposed constitutional amendments have not triggered major objections from opposition groups which had long called for the reforms outlined by the judicial committee. However, many Egyptians say the country needs an entirely new constitution -- something the judicial committee has said will happen after elections. "No one has objected to the constitutional amendments proposed," Sobhi said.

The military council has suspended the existing constitution and dissolved both houses of parliament. Elections to both the upper and lower chambers would follow the referendum, Saleh said, without saying when, and presidential elections would happen thereafter. The reforms will make it much easier for Egyptians to run for the presidency, removing requirements which made it almost impossible for anyone but the ruling party and representatives of weak opposition parties to field a candidate for the post.


"GREAT COUNTRY, GREAT HISTORY, GREAT FUTURE"
That will open the door to Moussa, who served as Mubarak's foreign minister for 10 years until 2001 and enjoys wide respect among Egyptians for outspoken remarks often directed against Israel and the United States. He warned that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 would open the "gates of hell" in the region. More recently, following the toppling of Tunisia's president in January, he warned Arab leaders of unprecedented anger among the Arab public.

Moussa met U.S. Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman and Republican Senator John McCain on Sunday. They later toured Tahrir Square, the hub of the protests that overthrew Mubarak, a long-time ally of the United States. "We're very happy to be here, it's very exciting new era for a great country, great history, great future," Lieberman said. Saleh, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, said the presidential powers would stay in the hands of the military until a president is elected.

The military council has said it hopes to hold the elections and hand power back to a civilian authority within six months. Some opposition figures are concerned that a rush towards elections is not in the best interests of democratic change. Mubarak's administration had suppressed opposition groups for decades and they say they need time to regroup.

They say only the Muslim Brotherhood, which was formally banned under Mubarak, is in the position to mount an election campaign, though the group says it will not seek a majority in parliament or the presidency. A quick election will also suit the remnants of the National Democratic Party, the ruling party which had dominated parliament under Mubarak. "The interim period should have been longer," said Hassan Nafaa, a political scientist.

(Additional reporting by Yasmine Saleh, Patrick Werr, Shaimaa Fayed and Ashraf Fahim; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

US Protesters fear governmets trying to weaken unions, Posted by Meosha Eaton

* Labor rights protesters gather around nation
* Protesters fear governments trying to weaken unions
* Thousands of angry workers take the U.S. streets

(Adds details from Los Angeles and Denver)

By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people protested in Wisconsin on Saturday against a state government push to curb the power of public sector unions, sparking solidarity rallies for labor rights around the United States. Protesters see the proposals as an effort to weaken the labor movement. Other states considering similar proposals include Ohio, Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa and Kansas.

Several thousand protesters gathered in New York City and Los Angeles, about 1,000 people turned out in Chicago, Denver and Columbus, Ohio, several hundred rallied in Austin, Texas, and about 100 people joined a protest in Miami. At the Wisconsin state Capitol in Madison, thousands of protesters chanted underneath Republican Governor Scott Walker's office window: "Hey hey, ho ho, Scott Walker has got to go."

"Union busting is wrong," said Joe Soto, a 56-year-old steamfitter from Reedsburg, northwest of Madison.

Wisconsin's state Assembly on Friday approved Walker's proposal to strip public sector unions of most collective bargaining rights. The plan now needs state Senate approval, but Senate Democrats have fled Wisconsin to prevent a vote. The bid by Wisconsin Republicans to try and balance the state budget by rewriting labor laws has turned into a national standoff with Republicans and business interests on one side, and Democrats and union groups on the other.

"When a governor refuses to invest in the people who educate our children and keep us safe, he needs to know this will not stand," actor Bradley Whitford, who played a White House staffer on "The West Wing" TV series and is a Wisconsin native, told the protesters in Madison.

'UN-AMERICAN'
The stakes are high for labor groups because more than a third of U.S. public employees, including teachers, police and civil service workers, belong to unions. Only about six percent of private sector workers are unionized. "We bailed out Goldman Sachs, we bailed out Wall Street, we bailed out GM, but the hell with our teachers, our fire fighters, our nurses, our city workers, our state workers! I'm here because that's unjust, unfair," said Raymond Wohl, a teacher for 20 years, at the Chicago protest.

Doug Frank, 51, said he drove three-and-a-half hours from his home in Crosby to attend the protest in Austin.

"This is finally the one that pushed me over the edge," said Frank, an oil and gas laboratory technician. "What they're trying to do (in Wisconsin) is very heavy-handed; it's un-American," he said. In New York, people waved signs reading "Cut bonuses, not teachers," "Unions make us strong," and "Wall St is destroying America," and wore stickers that read "We are all Wisconsin.

Anne O'Byrne, 44, a philosophy professor at Stony Brook University who brought her daughter Sophia, 2, to the New York rally, said she was disturbed by events in Wisconsin. "If we don't have collective bargaining rights I don't know what's left for workers in America," she said. "It seems important to me to resist any attempt to take away those union rights that have in fact brought us so much over the years."

John Cody, 26, of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, said unions were "under assault" in the United States and some protesters had drawn inspiration from the popular uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.

"Egypt is inspiring Americans and labor movements," he said. "Unions need to work like the corporations in some ways in that the world's become a globalized economy so unions need to show acts of solidarity not only across the United States but across the world."

(Additional reporting by James Kelleher, Stefanie Carano and David Bailey in Madison, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, Corrie MacLaggan in Austin, Christing Stebbins in Chicago, Jim Leckrone in Columbus and Thomas Brown in Miami, Editing by John Whitesides, Paul Simao and Todd Eastham)

Pakistan sends another American contractor to jail, Posted by Meosha Eaton

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 26 (Reuters) - A Pakistani court on Saturday sent another American national to jail, a day after he was detained in the northwestern city of Peshawar for overstaying his visa, a government lawyer said.

The arrest of the man identified as Aaron Mark DeHaven came as ties between the U.S. and its nuclear-armed ally Pakistan are already strained over the detention of a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, charged with killing two Pakistanis in what he says was self-defence on Jan. 27.

The United States says Davis has diplomatic immunity. Police presented DeHaven in a local court on Saturday and he was then remanded for 14 days, lawyer Javed Ali told Reuters. "He told the court that he had come to Pakistan on a business visa which expired in October last year and that he has already applied for the extension," Ali said.

"He said that his visa has not been renewed after which the court sent him to jail. He has been charged under a foreign act, that could result in his deportation," he said.
A U.S. embassy spokesperson said on Friday they had seen media reports about DeHaven's arrest and were trying to arrange consular access through the Pakistan government. The case of Davis, 36, arrested last month, has inflamed the already uneasy alliance between the United States and Pakistan, who are supposed to be united in the face of Islamist militants waging a war in Afghanistan.

Davis, a former U.S. special forces officer, has been charged with double-murder and faces possible execution. Davis shot dead two men in the eastern city of Lahore last month. He said he acted in self-defence and the United States says he has diplomatic immunity and should be repatriated. A Pakistan court on Friday adjourned Davis' trial until March 3, dismissing U.S. demands for his release.

(Reporting by Shams Mohmand; Writing by Augustine Anthony; Editing by Chris Allbritton and Sugita Katyal)