REUTERS, AFP and OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki will chair a presidential summit in Mozambique to try to salvage a peace deal in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – but even as regional leaders gathered in Maputo for Monday’s talks, fresh fighting erupted between the opposing parties in the war-torn country.
One diplomat said Mbeki is trying to get a commitment on troop withdrawal from the Congo to allow United Nations peacekeepers to deploy in the former Zaire under a peace accord signed in Lusaka last year.
The fractured rebel groups have not been invited to the day-long talks, which come with renewed fighting being reported in Africa’s third largest country.
Rebel leaders reported at the weekend that government forces had attacked rebel positions, killing civilians and burning villages. Jean-Pierre Ondekane of Rwandan-backed wing of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) said troops loyal to Kabila had killed nearly 80 people, including about 50 civilians whose villages were burnt.
“Kabila has launched a general offensive on all fronts. The fighting is continuing on the side of [the leader of another rebel group, Jean-Pierre] Bemba and has been going on on our positions since Saturday,” said Ondekane.
The attacking troops were made of DRC government soldiers, the Rwandan Hutu Interahamwe militia and Hutu rebels from Burundi’s Forces for the Defence of Democracy, he added.
Soldiers from Zimbabwe – which, like Angola and Namibia, back Kabila – were manning heavy artillery from rear lines, he said.
International initiatives to revive the Congo peace accord have failed because Kabila has refused to yield on two key issues: deployment of UN troops in the country and acceptance of ex-Botswana leader Ketumile Masire as organiser of all-party internal talks on the future of the Congo.
A cocktail of rebel groups directly backed by troops from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda control the east and large parts of the north of Congo in a standoff with government troops. Kabila’s forces control the capital Kinshasa, as well as the centre, west and copper-rich Katanga.