BANGUI (Reuters) - Rebels in Central African Republic took control of a strategic town north of the capital on Saturday after soldiers defending it withdrew, ramping up tensions ahead of planned peace talks.
The three-week-old uprising by SELEKA rebels poses the biggest threat yet to President Francois Bozize's near ten-year rule over the former French colony - a nation plagued by poverty and turmoil despite its rich natural resources.
Regional neighbours agreed on Friday to send more troops to shore up CAR's army after a string of defeats and after French President Francois Hollande rejected a plea for military help made by embattled President Francois Bozize.
Insurgents riding motorbikes and packed into pickup trucks streamed into Sibut, a regional capital on a major crossroads about 190 kilometres (115 miles) north of the capital Bangui, unopposed early on Saturday, said witnesses.
"(They) took positions at strategic points in the town, firing their guns," said Yvon Bema, a 27-year-old Sibut resident who fled to Bangui. "The national army and the Chadians had left on Friday in the direction of Bangui," he added.
The land around Sibut had been seen as a buffer between the rebels and Bangui. Government troops there were backed by soldiers from neighbouring Chad.
CAR's minister of territorial administration, Josue Binoua, confirmed on local radio that Sibut was occupied by rebels after troops withdrew to Damara, about 75 km north of Bangui, where clashes had been reported on Friday.
The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) - which already has more than 500 peacekeepers in CAR - announced overnight a decision to send in more troops ahead of talks planned between the rebels and the government in early January.
"We are thinking of a way to deploy this mission as quickly as possible," Gabon Foreign Minister Emmanuel Issoze Ngondet told reporters after a meeting with his regional counterparts in Gabon's capital Libreville. He did not say how many soldiers would be deployed.
The ECCAS soldiers, mostly from Chad, are part of the MICOPAX (Mission for the Consolidation of Peace in Central African Republic) peacekeeping force.
The SELEKA rebels have threatened to overthrow Bozize if he does not honour a previous peace deal offering former fighters pay and jobs. They have said they will stay out of Bangui for now to give peace talks a chance.
Officials in Bangui said on Friday rebels had agreed to send delegates to Libreville in early January, though a rebel spokesman was not immediately available to comment.
Bozize came to power in a rebellion in 2003 and has since won two elections. France launched air strikes against rebels challenging him in 2006, but Paris has said it will not intervene militarily in the current conflict.
The United States said on Thursday it had closed its embassy in Bangui and evacuated its staff.
Central African Republic is one of a number of countries in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local forces try to track down the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group which has killed thousands of civilians across four African nations.
About 1,200 French nationals live in CAR, mostly working for mining firms and aid groups in the capital. French defence ministry sources said Paris had sent in 150 troops to Bangui late on Friday to bolster an existing 250-strong deployment safeguarding French citizens.
French nuclear energy group Areva mines the Bakouma uranium deposit in CAR's south - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rebels-extend-reach-car-ahead-peace-talks-081533971.html
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Learning how to deal with other people is no easy task. Once a person breaks free of solitary confinement, there are three general types of relationships that can develop which characterize how others appear to us, and even more importantly how we comport ourselves with others. All of these possibilities are preferable to the initial state of being alone. This is not to say that this form of loneliness should be reduced to being single in the sense of being unmarried. For instance, there are unfortunately many married people who feel ?alone? at times in the context of their marriage. On the flip side, each us may maintain a multitude of meaningful relationships that are ?sacred bonds? throughout our entire lives. Nonetheless, the bottom line model of marriage remains just as relevant. In light of this, our real purpose is to demonstrate how all our states of being (including being alone) have to be uplifted and sweetened by added new layers of understanding.
However, if I am disconnected from my own inner being, estranged from my own soul, lost in an inauthentic shell of a pretend self, then I am internally isolated?the symptom of which is that I am most uncomfortable in my own skin. I don?t recognize the person staring back at me in the mirror. All self-reflection such as this always entails a doubling: the subject as knower and the subject as the object of inquiry. Introspection makes sense of the odd impulse of needing to ?find oneself.? If I turn myself into an other, then the person I that meet (who is me) may be a source of internal unity (corresponding to the selfless dedication of being to or for an other in the interpersonal realm) or mutually beneficial support (as in the second relationship configuration?in this case I find myself ?negotiating? with myself so that I will back myself up?I ?second? my own motion in the congressional sessions in my mind) or I am filled with conflict and turn into my own worst enemy. The last type of relationship helps explain how our ?internal affairs? can get out of order, how I can betray my own best self-interests or undermine myself.