OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki is expected to visit Kinshasa on Tuesday to meet the new leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a foreign ministry representative said on the weekend.
Mbeki, who is in Switzerland to attend the annual economic summit in Davos, will make a stopover in Kinshasa on his way back to Johannesburg, the representative said.
The visit to Kinshasa would be the first by a foreign head of state since Joseph Kabila, the 29-year-old son of slain DRC leader Laurent Kabila, was sworn in as president on Friday.
South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma met with Joseph Kabila last week after attending Laurent Kabila’s funeral, and told the new president that Mbeki was interested in meeting him.
Zuma said he had the impression that Joseph Kabila wanted to continue the peace process in the war-torn republic with the advice of South Africa, which helped broker the 1999 Lusaka agreement for the country.
South African Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said earlier that South Africa was ready to organise a new summit on the war in the DRC.
Two earlier South-African sponsored summits took place in the Mozambique capital Maputo.
Unlike its fellow southern African states Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, which have sent troops to support the DRC regime against the rebels, South Africa has pointedly refrained from supporting either side in the conflict. – AFP