OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Thursday 7.00pm.
REBELS in the Democratic Republic of Congo who this week captured the strategic eastern town of Kindu, are still ready to negotiate with President Laurent Kabila, a spokesman said on Thursday.
The rebels’ position on negotiations “has not changed” after their victory in Kindu, said Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, the chairman of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, the political wing of the rebellion. “We are still ready for negotiations if President Kabila is willing to discuss the key issues, the principles of installing democracy,” Wamba dia Wamba said. But “since we can see no initiative on the part of Kabila in favour of peace, we will continue to fight,” he added. He said Kabila had “already disqualified himself from playing a role [in the DRC] because as president he has been unable to fulfil his most important obligation, that of guaranteeing the unity of the country.”
Wamba dia Wamba said DRC was “open to political movements which want to install durable democracy” in the country.
He went on to criticise the “bellicose discourse” of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, one of Kabila’s military allies. He accused the Zimbabwean leader of “endangering the security of the whole region” and encouraging “the genocide establihed by Kabila” against Tutsis, the ethnic group spearheading the rebellion. — AFP