SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Sunday 5.00pm
THE Department of Foreign Affairs on Sunday rejected recent reports that South Africa is arming certain rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The department in a statement denied it is providing assistance to any faction in the conflict and said its intevention is on a diplomatic level and is totally impartial.
Last week DRC President Laurent Kabila claimed according to news reports that South Africa is arming rebels bent on toppling his government, while hypocritically advocating a negotiated peace.
President Thabo Mbeki’s spokesman Parks Mankahlana later rejected the allegation as “totally devoid of truth.”
Home Affairs on Sunday said that South Africa has, since the Pretoria Declaration of 23 August 1998, “consistently and tirelessly promoted a ceasefire agreement that would call for the cessation of hostilities, troop standstill and withdrawal of all foreign troops on DRC soil.”
The statement also stresses that South Africa is a constitutional democracy that “attracts many people with differing political persuasions and the presence in our country of any visitor does not imply that the government favours them or their beliefs or supplies them with any support.”
Kabila last week condemned the government’s decision to hold ongoing talks with rebels, among them Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, leader of one of two factions of the Congolese Rally for Democracy, who visited Pretoria this month and held talks with Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. He was particularly incensed that Mbeki held talks with Etienne Tshisekedi, the president of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), the main internal opposition political party in the DRC.
The department did not comment made by President Thabo Mbeki on Friday that South Africa would be prepared to contribute to the peacekeeping force.