Hillary to tackle African trouble spots

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WASHINGTON, Aug 3 (AP): Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton embarks Monday on a seven-nation tour of Africa to affirm the Obama administration's commitment to tackling trouble spots across the continent from Somalia and Zimbabwe to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.
Clinton kicks off the 11-day trip - her longest overseas journey to date as the top US diplomat - in Kenya where she will address an African trade and development forum, meet top Kenyan officials and see the beleaguered president of lawless Somalia's interim government.
Kenya, the homeland of President Barack Obama's late father, is struggling to overcome political and tribal divisions laid bare in early 2008 after disputed elections between the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Obama, on a visit to Kenya in 2006, had urged Kenyans not to let those differences mar their democratic development, and US officials say Clinton will repeat that message with Kibaki and Odinga, who became prime minister in a power-sharing deal that ended the crisis.
Officials say she will also offer US support to Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, whose embattled government is trying to face down Islamist extremists accused of links with al-Qaida who threaten to destabilise the Horn of Africa region.
"We think that the problems in southern Somalia have started to bleed regionally and internationally," the top US diplomat for Africa, Johnnie Carson, said last week. He noted that violence in Somalia, which has not had a functioning central authority since 1991, has led to an exodus of refugees that has strained the capacity of its neighbours, notably Kenya.
Clinton then travels to South Africa, where she will urge President Jacob Zuma's government to do more to press neighbouring Zimbabwe, in the throes of economic crisis, to fully implement a political pact between President Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.