The rebels also will turn in their weapons.The Great Council of Chiefs, made up of about 50 tribal leaders from across Fiji, will meet to select a new president, vice president and a new interim civilian government to guide Fiji back to democracy.The military installed an interim government just days ago, but Speight rejected it as he had no say in its formation.The council cannot meet before Thursday because some chiefs have to travel from remote islands.Although the hostage release is days away and any deal could still unravel, there was a general hope that the agreement would hold.Speight and his rebels have never before signed an agreement despite weeks of intense negotiations.Seated at a small table in front of a large traditional painting on the rear lawn of the vice president’s official residence, Bainimarama signed first, followed by Speight.The deal “is not the end, it is the beginning of a long journey,” a somber Bainimarama said. “We must be united.”The signing was preceded by a Fijian Methodist hymn and a long prayer, also in Fijian, led by an army chaplain.Speight supporters crowded eight deep to watch the signing and those who couldn’t fit on the rear lawn waited in front of the residence singing hymns, the sound of which drifted over the solemn ceremony.The signing represented victory for Speight, who stormed Parliament with six other gunmen May 19 saying he wanted more power for indigenous Fijians and to disenfranchise the country’s ethnic Indian minority.”We know we are on the verge of something historic for our country,” a triumphant Speight said before entering the vice president’s residence.Speight and about 500 supporters walked the one kilometer (0.6 mile) from Parliament to the residence. His supporters chanted hymns and clapped rhythmically as they walked, some waved palm fronds.The military will offer amnesty to all those involved in civil disturbances since Speight took the government hostage.Although Speight was clearly delighted at the outcome, the agreement is likely to make Fiji an international pariah.Governments including the United States and key trading partners Australia, New Zealand and the European Union have threatened economic sanctions unless Fiji returns to full multiracial democracy.The military seized control 10 days after Speight’s coup and installed Bainimarama as head of state.The deal represented a total cave in to Speight, who had long called for the chiefs to be allowed to settle the crisis.Military negotiators already have agreed to most of Speight’s demands, including deposing Mahendra Chaudhry, the first Fijian of Indian ancestry to lead the country, and scrapping the multiracial 1997 constitution.Late Sunday there were also reports that two police stations, in the towns of Savu Savu and Eaqaqa on the northern island of Vanua Levu, were occupied by Speight supporters. No further details were immediately available.Earlier Sunday about 1,000 people attended a memorial service in Parliament for a supporter of Speight who died Saturday of a gunshot wound suffered Tuesday in a gunbattle with the military.The 24-year-old victim, a member of the elite Counter-Revolutionary Warfare unit, was the second fatality in the crisis.The fate of 28 other hostages, snatched Saturday, was unclear, but they likely also would be released if Speight gave the word.The new hostages were taken by about 100 Speight supporters in the town of Korovou, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) outside Suva.Nobody was injured in the seizure.The military returned to the negotiating table following a wave of civil unrest including local landowners shutting down the largest island’s main hydroelectric power station and villagers blocking the main road linking the capital Suva with Nadi, where the international airport is located.The Suva-Nadi road remained blocked Sunday.Fifty-one per cent of the 812,000 population are indigenous Fijians and many resent the clout of ethnic Indians, who account for 44 percent and dominated the ousted government.Tensions between the two groups rose this year when Chaudhry opposed plans to raise rents paid by Indian sugar cane farmers to indigenous Fijian landowners.. It was meant to be a beacon of hope: the first international Aids conference to be held in the developing world and the first hosted by South Africa, the most ravaged country in an Aids-ravaged continent.

It was meant to be a beacon of hope: the first international Aids conference to be held in the developing world and the first hosted by South Africa, the most ravaged country in an Aids-ravaged continent.
But until the last moment, the gathering in Durban of 11,000 delegates from 178 countries was shaping up as a slanging match that would drive another wedge between the First and Third Worlds.It all began earlier this year when President Thabo Mbeki stunned the science world by aligning himself with so-called Aids “dissidents” who hold that the illness is not caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but is a disease stemming from specifically African conditions, first and foremost poverty.The mainstream scientific community was appalled, and responded with a “Durban declaration” signed by 5,000 luminaries, damning “revisionists” and warning that such a re-airing of old and largely discredited views would only distract attention from the crisis at hand.But Mr Mbeki’s aides poured scorn on the challenge, saying it would “find its comfortable place in the dustbin”.Aids is far too serious to bicker over. Since it was first identified some 20 years ago, what was thought to be a scourge confined to promiscuous homosexual males in the West has become the first pandemic of the new millennium.The disease has now taken more than 15 million lives, 2.8 million of them in 1999 alone. According to the United Nations, more than 34 million men and women are infected worldwide, two-thirds of these in sub-Saharan Africa.In the hardest-hit countries, South Africa and Zimbabwe, a fifth of the adult population is infected, and one in three of today’s 15-year-olds will be killed by the illness.As it has spread, a health emergency has turned into an economic and political crisis. Suddenly, among intelligence experts and foreign policy makers alarm bells are ringing.The Clinton administration has declared the disease a national security threat, warning that it is tearing apart already fragile countries.Conventional sicknesses like malaria and tuberculosis strike at children and the elderly; the victims of Aids, however, are adults in the prime of life, parents and wealth creators, whose incapacitation and death will undermine governments, increase poverty and ultimately destroy societies.Analysts point to the example of Sierra Leone – a state where government has collapsed, upsetting the local and regional balance of power.UN peacekeeping forces dispatched to such failed states are now being accused of propagating the disease further, by deploying African contingents including men already infected with HIV, who then have sex with local women.Seen in these terms, the dispute between dissidents and mainstream scientists is an irrelevance, a petty squabble.

But controversy is inevitable over a subject which, though ostensibly medical, is steeped in three guaranteed combustibles: sex, race and politics.After all, why is Aids particularly rampant in Africa? Are local parasites, which reduce human immune levels, responsible? Or is it due to the promiscuity of black Africans, and Africa’s higher levels of untreated sexually transmitted diseases?The dissidents maintain that it has nothing to do with the immunodeficiency virus, but is instead a regional affliction brought on by malnutrition and poverty.The implication is clear: the disease is part of the colonial legacy, and in South Africa – the country worst affected by Aids – a last spiteful gift of the apartheid regime.Others, however, wonder whether Mr Mbeki’s theorising is just a device to divert attention from his country’s appalling record in coping with the disease.The last thing the African Aids disaster needs is a schism among medical philosophers It requires action – and money. But that is not as easy as it sounds.In developed Europe and North America, sophisticated cocktails of anti-viral drugs have turned Aids from a certain killer into a chronic but manageable ailment with which people can live for decades. But at $10,000 (£6,600) or more for a year’s course, such treatment is beyond the means of any African country.True, five major drugs companies, including Britain’s Glaxo Wellcome, are promising to slash the cost of their drugs to developing countries by up to 85 per cent.But even then South Africa would face a bill of $19bn over five years to provide such treatment to just a quarter of those infected with the Aids virus, according to Canadian researchers.And as the West has learnt to contain the disease for its own Aids sufferers, the sense of urgency has diminished. “Tie the needs of the poor to the fears of the rich,” says a former director of America’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention.”When the rich lose their fear, they are not willing to invest in the problems of the poor.” But if Aids is to be conquered, they must.The 5,000 learned papers presented at the Durban conference will produce no miracles. A proven and affordable vaccine is still years off.Though the Clinton administration wants to double international Aids relief funding to $254m, no quick financial fix will be agreed – certainly not the billions needed to stem and reverse Africa’s Aids crisis.The signs late last week were that a 33-man advisory panel set up by Mr Mbeki has come up with enough agreed recommendations to paper over the rift.The Durban conference is likely to end with a set of predictable recommendations: for more widespread safe sex campaigns, improved diagnosis and treatment options, more help for the orphaned and bereaved. But Africa’s Aids misery will get worse before it gets better.’We are sick We can’t help it Don’t turn away’ An HIV-positive child’s story By Liz Clarke in Durban.. A new front in the worldwide row over the 2006 World Cup opened up yesterday, with accusations that racism and personal rivalries had determined the destination of the biggest international sports tournament after the Olympic Games.

A new front in the worldwide row over the 2006 World Cup opened up yesterday, with accusations that racism and personal rivalries had determined the destination of the biggest international sports tournament after the Olympic Games.
Charles Dempsey, the delegate whose abstention in the final round of voting in Zurich gave the finals to Germany by one vote, went to ground at home in New Zealand yesterday. But in an embittered South Africa, which lost the tournament after being considered the favourite, there were claims that Mr Dempsey had defied orders from his Oceania federation and the New Zealand government to back their bid because of his close association with Lennart Johansson, the Swedish head of the European football federation, Uefa.Mr Johansson, one of Germany’s most stalwart supporters, is deeply unpopular in Africa, where he has been accused more than once of racism. In an interview with a Swedish daily four years ago about the possibility of Africa staging the 2006 World Cup, he made racist remarks. Forced to apologise later, he said: “I have many coloured friends.”Mr Johansson’s remarks are thought to have damaged his campaign to become president of Fifa, football’s world governing body, a post won instead by his bitter rival, Sepp Blatter of Switzerland. Mr Blatter succeeded at least in part because of his promise that he would work for the 2006 World Cup to go to South Africa.Tony Banks, a member of England’s bid team, said that the 79-year-old Mr Dempsey had been seen “shaking like a leaf” hours before the final vote, but there were reports that the New Zealander had promised the German team as early as last Monday that he would abstain once England had been eliminated.South African football executives will decide tomorrow whether to appeal against the vote.

But South Africa – which had hoped to become the first African country to stage the World Cup – is likely to have to be content with international sympathy and the hope that its narrow failure will stand it in good stead for 2010.. Heard the one about the airports boss who complained about one of his staff being “fat”, “sloppy” and that her “poor presentation” made him look bad, only to find that she was four months’ pregnant?

Heard the one about the airports boss who complained about one of his staff being “fat”, “sloppy” and that her “poor presentation” made him look bad, only to find that she was four months’ pregnant?
Or the one about the manufacturing company manager who sat down with staff for heart-to-heart chats, and then used the information to have them fired?Or the call centre manager who spent months rubbishing her staff’s ideas, only to steal them and pass them off as her own?Well, they are all true examples of narcissistic management shown up in a book to be published later this month. Where Egos Dare, by two American management experts, purports to lift the lid on the cult of bullying managers and tells staff how to survive them.Writers Dean McFarlin and Paul Sweeny warn against the cult that has grown up in American and British corporations of idolising leaders, a cult that has led to multi-million pound salaries for top bosses such as Chris Gent or Gerry Robinson.”Unfortunately, many employees feel their leaders do anything but lead,” the US academics say. “In fact, all too often they say that bosses spend their time pursuing their own selfish agendas, usually at someone else’s expense.”The book is peppered with examples of narcissistic, aggressive or merely bad leadership.