BRYAN PEARSON, Cape Town | Tuesday 1.00pm.
8.00pm:
TALKS to find a peace deal for the 11-month war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) stalled on Wednesday when the DRC government delegation objected to rebels signing a cesefire agreement, a Zambian private radio station said on Wednesday.
Radio Phoenix quoted diplomatic sources saying President Laurent Kabila’s team insisted that the rebels should not be signatories since they are not a government. The new DRC demand had led to a 24-hour adjournment with the various delegations shuttling between hotel rooms, Zambian foreign ministry offices and President Fredrick Chiluba’s official residence.
It is still not clear late Wednesday whether the talks will resume.
1.00pm:
SOUTH AFRICA will send peacekeeping troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo once a ceasefire has been effected in the war-torn central African state, President Thabo Mbeki announced on Wednesday.
The mission will be the second peacekeeping operation by post-apartheid South African troops in Africa following their successful intervention in the conflict in Lesotho last year.
Defence Minister Patrick Lekota said South African troops would have a non-combative role and be part of a joint monitoring commission to be set up by the Organisation of African Unity.
“We will have to send some South Africans to contribute to the peacemaking process that must be an outcome of those negotiations,” Mbeki told parliament, referring to peace talks currently under way in Lusaka.
“The government will take all the necessary constitutional and legal steps to ensure that any deployment of our troops is handled correctly.”
The new president, speaking during debate on his first state of the nation address, said “progress has been achieved” in Lusaka and he was convinced a resolution was in sight.
Speaking to reporters later, Lekota said South African troops would not immediately be dispatched to the DRC.
He emphasised peacekeeping rather than peace-enforcement, saying that the monitoring commission would have a “non-combative capacity.”
“At the moment we can only state the principle but not the details,” he said. The defence minister could not elaborate on the numbers of troops that would be involved, saying deployment would depend on the content of the ceasefire agreement, which he expected to be signed later this week.
Policing any ceasefire in the vast African state, where infrastructure is almost non-existent, would be a logistical nightmare, according to the independent Institute of Security Studies, based in Pretoria.
Institute researcher Jakkie Potgieter said last week that he believed a deployment of between 25000 and 30000 African peacekeeping troops would be required in the DRC for at least a 12-month period.
“Among the challenges facing this plan will be ‘who is going to foot the bill?’,” Potgieter said. –AFP