A group of leaders are exploiting a lull in the fighting in Central Africa to broker a peace agreement, reports Howard Barrell
African leaders have been involved in a series of hush-hush meetings and manoeuvres over the past fortnight aimed at giving fresh impetus to the search for a comprehensive agreement to end the continent’s wars.
The main players include presidents Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Sam Nujoma of Namibia, Jos Eduardo dos Santos of Angola, as well as Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Moammar Gadaffi of Libya and Angolan rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
The talks and contacts have sought to exploit a window of opportunity provided by the Central African rainy season, which usually halts active fighting for several months. They have occurred as far afield as Cape Town, Kampala, Lusaka and Tripoli.
The latest round of manoeuvring reflects a clear recognition among key African leaders that the conflicts in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda interlock and can be dealt with through a series of trade-offs and linked agreements.
“People seem to have cottoned on to the potential for peace that flows from `my enemy’s enemy is my friend’,” said a South African security analyst this week. “The game is in play, and the situation is very fluid.”
Following various contacts, Mandela was due to host a hush-hush meeting in Cape Town on September 27, bringing together the main parties in the dispute involving Sudan and Uganda.
Museveni, Sudan’s President Omar Hasan Ahmed el-Bashir and Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, which has substantial investments in Sudan, were due to meet under Mandela’s chairmanship. But the meeting was called off when Mahathir could not attend and amid doubts that Bashir was ready for such a meeting, according to South African government officials.
Museveni, perhaps the main player in the initiatives, wants an end to Sudan’s support for rebels conducting a guerrilla war in northern Uganda against his government. For its part, Sudan’s mainly Muslim government wants an end to Ugandan and other regional support for mainly Christian rebels fighting in southern Sudan.
Museveni sent a personal emissary to see Mugabe in Harare on Wednesday with the message that, if Mugabe could help get Sudan off his back, he was prepared to withdraw his troops from Congo and end his backing for rebels there.
This would allow Mugabe and Dos Santos to withdraw their troops from Congo, something both of them desperately need to do – in Mugabe’s case for financial reasons and in Dos Santos’s for security reasons, given the Unita threat.
While his emissary was in Harare, Museveni broke United Nations sanctions barring flights to Libya to visit Gadaffi. He is believed to have asked Gadaffi not to finance the deployment over the past fortnight of Chadian forces in Congo.
The Chadians in Congo are at Kindu in the east and at Motadi, the port serving Kinshasa, to give backing to Laurent Kabila’s government. Gadaffi and Museveni are old friends, dating back to Museveni’s days as a guerrilla leader in Uganda.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Savimbi was in Kampala for meetings with Museveni and other Ugandan leaders on September 15 and 16. Savimbi is understood to have been trying to get confirmation that Uganda would allow aircraft flying in military supplies for Savimbi to refuel at Kampala’s Entebbe airport.
The main route for supplies to Savimbi is currently understood to be from Eastern European countries, via Egypt and on to the central highlands of Angola where Savimbi has his main base.
Museveni’s response to Savimbi’s request is not known, but the presence in Kampala of the Angolan rebel leader provides Museveni with an implied threat which he can wield against the Angolan government, whose troops Museveni wants to see withdrawn from Congo.
Savimbi’s other main refuelling option is Bangui airport in the Central African Republic.
Over the past week, Nujoma has meanwhile attended a summit of Francophone countries in Libreville, capital of Gabon, to brief them and seek their help in bringing an end to the Angolan conflict. This includes calling for an end to overflight and refuelling rights for aircraft flying in supplies to Savimbi, via the Central African Republic among others.
Political leaders of the rebels in Congo have visited Lusaka, the Zambian capital, over the past 10 days. The purpose of their visit is unknown. But security analysts believe they may have had meetings with Southern African Development Community (SADC) officials with a view to taking forward SADC peace initiatives on the Congo.They also may have had meetings with Zambian officials with a view to obtaining the right to base fighters in Zambia, which adjoins the Congo province of Katanga.
Rwanda, which backs the Congo rebels, and Zambia entered into a joint military training agreement in late July this year, a few weeks before the civil war broke out in the Congo.