LAWRENCE BARTLETT, Lusaka | Sunday 11.30am.
SIX nations involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo signed a ceasefire pact in Lusaka on Saturday, but not rebels trying to topple President Laurent Kabila.
Zambian President Frederick Chiluba said the rebels will sign later, after he has decided on the validity of conflicting leadership claims among the rebels.
The accord’s signing was stalled for 12 hours by a row within the Congolese Rally for Democracy, whose “ousted” leader Ernese Wamba dia Wamba refused to get out of a seat reserved for the group’s official representative.
But Chiluba, the pact’s chief mediator, said: “All the governments who are parties to the conflict and all members of the RCD and MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) have not objected to anything in the ceasefire agreement.”
Thus it was decided that the heads of state of DRC, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Uganda and Rwanda, plus Angola’s defense minister, would go ahead and sign the accord.
Following an Organization of African Unity summit next week, Chiluba will go and visit RCD leaders to decide who is their legitimate chairman and who should sign on their behalf.
Although the MLC was prepared to sign on Saturday, Chiluba said it was decided that all the rebels should sign at the same time, once the RCD leadership wrangle is sorted out.
The RCD faction in question, led by Emile Ilunga, recently announced Wambia dia Wamba’s ousting from the movement’s leadership, a move Wamba dia Wamba rejected outright.
Although Wamba dia Wamba is willing to be a joint signatory with Ilunga, the accord only has space for one RCD signature.
Kabila and his ally Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe were among the leaders who arrived in Lusaka on Saturday for the ceremony to ratify the accord, which was reached on Wednesday.
The accord calls for an end to hostilities within 24 hours of the signing, the deployment of a peacekeeping force by the UN and the OAU, and the withdrawal of all foreign forces after six months.
It also stipulates that armed groups in the DRC, including the Interahamwe Hutu militia responsible for inciting the 1994 Rwandan genocide and still perceieved as a threat by Kigali and Kampala, will be tracked down and disarmed.
— AFP