OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00pm.
DELEGATES from the six countries discussing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo have adjourned their meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, saying they are expecting “other parties” to join the talks on Friday.
Sources at the conference would not say who the “other parties” might be. The meeting at the headquarters of the Organisation of African Unity broke up at 7pm (1600 GMT).
The DRC rebels, who have not been invited to the conference, and who were snubbed at the Victoria Falls summit after being invited to attend at the weeken, have declared the Addis Ababa talk of a ceasefire “pointless”.
Fighting has continued unabated in the DRC itself. Government troops have reportedly retaken the town of Kalemie on the northern border of Katanga province after heavy bombardment.
However an attemt to retake Kisangani, the DRC’s third largest city, on Thursday morning failed, and the city is reported to be “firmly” in rebel hands.
Speaking in the rebel stronghold of Goma, in the eastern DRC, Arthur Zahidi Ngoma, second vice-president of the rebels’ political wing, the Congolese Rally for Democracy, said rebel forces had captured the town of Shabunda, 250km to the south-west.
Ngoma dismissed the Addis Ababa meeting, saying it could achieve nothing without the rebels. “If we are invited we will go,” he said. “The question of a ceasefire is not military it is political. It presupposes political negotiations.”
DRC President Laurent Kabila has meanwhile left Kinshasa, after less than 24 hours, for a visit to Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, official sources said. No reason was given for Kabila’s visit, but the republic’s President Ange-Felix Patasse is know to be a Kablia supporter.
Kabila is represented at the Addis Ababa talks by his foreign minister, Jean-Charles Okoto Lolakombe.