ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Holding ex-President Laurent Gbagbo’s war crimes trial in The Hague will prove safer for Ivory Coast than trying him at home, but will do little to solve the problems at the root of the country’s civil conflicts.

Gbagbo sparked a four-month war that killed 3,000 people and displaced more than a million when he refused to cede a November 2010 election he lost to President Alassane Ouattara. He was moved to The Hague last week, making him the first ex-head of state expected to be tried by the court.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Holding ex-President Laurent Gbagbo’s war crimes trial in The Hague will prove safer for Ivory Coast than trying him at home, but will do little to solve the problems at the root of the country’s civil conflicts.

Gbagbo sparked a four-month war that killed 3,000 people and displaced more than a million when he refused to cede a November 2010 election he lost to President Alassane Ouattara. He was moved to The Hague last week, making him the first ex-head of state to be tried by the court.

AMSTERDAM/ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo will appear before the International Criminal Court on Monday, to face charges of crimes against humanity including murder and rape, officials said.

Gbagbo, 66, was flown from Ivory Coast to the Netherlands on Wednesday and transferred to a detention centre in The Hague, making him the first former head of state to be tried by the global court since its inception in 2002.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – When Laurent Gbagbo decided to reject his defeat in Ivory Coast’s presidential election a year ago, he set off a chain of events that saw him deposed by force and on Wednesday landed him in The Hague.

Perhaps the defiant president underestimated the extent of international ire he would draw for scuppering the West African nation’s last hope of peace. Or maybe he was just too stubborn.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo was expected to arrive in the Netherlands on Wednesday to face an arrest warrant at the International Criminal Court, the first former head of state to do so since its inception.

The Hague-based court, which is also pursuing Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir and investigating alleged crimes in Kenya, Libya and Central African Republic, has so far declined to comment on the warrant.

LAGOS, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s failure to mop
up two oil spills in the Niger Delta has caused huge suffering
to locals whose fisheries and farmland were poisoned, and the
firm and its partners must pay $1 billion to start cleaning up
the region, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

A spokesman for Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said the company and its
partners had already acknowledged the two oil spills and started
cleaning up, adding it had been hampered by oil theft, which was
responsible for most spills in the Delta.

LAGOS, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s failure to mop
up two oil spills in the Niger Delta has caused huge suffering
to locals whose fisheries and farmland were poisoned, and the
firm and its partners must pay $1 billion to start cleaning up
the region, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

A spokesman for Shell (RDSa.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said the company and its
partners had already acknowledged the two oil spills and started
cleaning up, adding it had been hampered by oil theft, which was
responsible for most spills in the Delta.

LAGOS, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell’s failure to mop
up two oil spills in the Niger Delta has caused huge suffering
to locals whose fisheries and farmland were poisoned, and it
must pay $1 billion to start cleaning up the region, Amnesty
International said on Thursday.

A spokesman for Shell said the company had already
acknowledged the two oil spills and started cleaning up, adding
that oil theft was responsible for most spills in the Delta.

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Major donors to Ivory Coast are in talks with President Alassane Ouattara to urge him to draft a plan for badly needed reforms to his security forces, and turn an undisciplined mix of soldiers and former rebels into a professional force.

A Western diplomat involved in the talks told Reuters donors want to see Ouattara move more quickly to integrate some of the armed elements left over from its decade of civil war and crisis into disciplined units — then disarm and demobilise the rest.

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s regulators plan to introduce new lending standards for banks aimed at preventing loans to businesses that wreck the ecosystem, including oil companies not meeting environmental standards, the central bank governor said on Friday.

Lamido Sanusi told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference on sustainable finance in the commercial hub of Lagos that the standards would encourage environmentally responsible lending.