EVARISTO CUMBANE, Maputo | Tuesday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki has engineered a breakthrough in the conflict known as “Africa’s World War” by persuading five African leaders with armies embroiled in the Democratic Republic of Congo war to agree to pull their troops back.
Mbeki, who mediated the one-day summit in Maputo, said the nations involved in the war agreed to pull back their troops at least 15km from their current positions in a “search for middle ground” to end the crippling conflict.
“We were meeting to discuss the issue of speeding up the implementation of the Lusaka agreement, specifically with regard to the withdrawal of foreign troops in the Congo,” he said, adding that Rwandan President Paul Kagame offered to pull his forces back 200km.
The leaders gathered here also agreed to meet again in two weeks to judge progress made in the troop movements, which are to be monitored by the United Nations, Mbeki said.
The six belligerent nations along with the rebels fighting in the DRC pencilled a peace deal in the Zambian capital last year, but the accord has been repeatedly violated and several other summits have been held to try to keep the accord on rails.
Presidents Laurent Kabila of the DRC and his allies Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sam Nujoma of Namibia attended the meeting, as did Kagame and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, who both have troops fighting alongside rebel factions who launched an uprising in August 1998.
The tangled war has given free rein to foreign business and political interests trying to exploit DRC’s vast natural resources, which include diamonds, gold and uranium.
Mugabe, who has some 12 000 troops supporting Kabila, called on South Africa last week to convene the urgent meeting of leaders of countries taking part in the war, saying Kabila’s allies were “looking for middle ground.”
One rebel group, the Rwandan-backed wing of the rebel Congolese Rally for Demcocracy (RCD), accused Kabila’s troops of attacking rebel positions in the southeastern Katanga province at the weekend, killing at least 80 people, including about 50 civilians. – AFP