MICHEL CARIOU, Kinshasa | Friday
THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), embroiled since August 1998 in a conflict that has drawn in five foreign armies, is edging towards peace as fighters begin pulling back from front-line positions in a UN-monitored operation.
The long-awaited operation – along a front line that extends some 2 400km and cuts the vast central African country roughly in half – is set to last two weeks.
The belligerents are to pull their forces 15km back from about 100 front-line positions under an agreement reached last December and in subsequent meetings.
The war, which began with a rebel uprising in August 1998, has drawn in Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia backing the Kinshasa regime and Rwanda and Uganda on the side of the rebels.
The DRC peace process received a major boost when Joseph Kabila took over from his assassinated father Laurent in January, and immediately went on a tour of the West advocating a revival of a ceasefire accord signed by all warring parties in Lusaka, Zambia, in mid-1999.
If the disengagement operation succeeds, the UN Observer Mission in the DRC (MONUC) will be able to deploy a 5 500-strong peacekeeping force approved by the UN Security Council in February last year.
A military spokesman in Harare said the initial pullback had begun without incident, but that a Ugandan-backed rebel group, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) had not yet ordered its forces to disengage.
MONUC, which is to verify the pullback after the two-week period elapses, has so far received no information on the progress of the disengagement operations, UN spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Regis Barman said.
At the end of the exercise, on March 29, “all the parties will be required to give the exact position and strength of each headquarters or unit within a 50km radius around their new defensive positions.”
An envoy of DRC President Kabila said in Luanda that Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia would not begin their withdrawal from front-line positions until after Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers have pulled back. – AFP
ZA*NOW:
Litmus test for peace in the DRC March 15, 2001