HERVE BAR, Goma | Monday
UNITED Nations peacekeepers will begin deploying this week in rebel-held parts in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as fighters from several countries pull away from front-line positions under a 1999 ceasefire accord.
200 Uruguayan peacekeepers will take up positions in southeastern Kalemi, with a “first wave” arriving on Thursday, one week after the start of the UN-monitored disengagement in the two-and-a-half-year-old conflict.
Officials of the UN Observer Mission in the DRC (MONUC) agreed at a meeting last Friday with leaders of the main rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) in Goma, in the far east of the country, that the peacekeepers would be quartered in northeastern Kisangani and in Kalemi.
Both sides in the discussion, attended by special UN representative Kamel Morjane, said it had been fruitful, although Morjane said: “You can’t say it was a complete success.”
A rebel delegate said of the meeting: “The United Nations came with a key deployment plan in hand, thinking we would accept it unconditionally.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he added: “We discussed it point by point. We made some concessions, but also some new proposals, and we await their response.”
Three hundred Moroccan peacekeepers will take up positions in Kisangani, the DRC’s third largest city, starting April 15, and another 230 Moroccans will come here to Goma on May 9.
Peacekeepers will deploy to government-held zones beginning April 3 when 206 Senegalese troops will arrive in the central city of Kananga, and another 280 Senegalese are set to arrive in northwestern Mbandaka on April 27, followed by 200 Tunisians in the capital Kinshasa on May 21.
March 15 was the formal start date for troop withdrawals along a frontline that extends some 2 400km and cuts the vast central African country roughly in half.
In two weeks, the belligerents are to pull their forces 15km back from about 100 frontline positions under an agreement reached last December and in subsequent meetings. – AFP
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