THE European Union will exert “all necessary political pressure” to ensure that UN troops are deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and that foreign armies withdraw, EU special envoy Aldo Ajello said after meeting new DRC President Joseph Kabila.
The DRC war, which has lasted for two-and-a-half years, involves troops from Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe fighting alongside the government army, against rebels backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops.
It has destabilised the entire region and split the huge country in half.
Kabila, a 29-year-old general who commanded the DRC army, took the oath of office Friday to succeed his father, Laurent Kabila, who died on January 18, the government said, after being shot by a bodyguard two days earlier.
The late president was seen by many as the main obstacle to peace in the war-torn country.
He wanted revisions to a generally accepted 1999 peace agreement signed in the Zambian capital Lusaka that has nevertheless failed to halt the fighting, and put stumbling blocks in the way of the planned deployment of 500 UN observers protected by 5 000 “blue helmets”.
The senior Kabila also rejected former Botswana president Ketumile Masire as the Organisation of African Unity’s “facilitator” of political dialogue.
Joseph Kabila, in a speech to the nation after his inauguration, pledged efforts to resuscitate the Lusaka accord and to establish political dialogue to lead to post-war elections.
“He indicated a path to follow that interests us a lot,” Ajello said, adding: “We have the same feeling … that dialogue will work, rather than fighting”.
Ajello said that after Kabila’s speech, there “should now be no obstacles” to the deployment of the UN troops and the subsequent disengagement of the foreign armies.
He added that the European Union was sitting on ?major funding? for the DRC which had been sitting in a bank account since the EU suspended aid to the regime of longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, overthrown in May 1997 by Laurent Kabila after an eight-month guerrilla war. – AFP