TWELVE UN Security Council envoys announced plans in South Africa on Thursday for a timetable to end the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), then headed for Kinshasa as President Joseph Kabila lifted a ban on political activity. Kabila’s move “sets the stage for positive development in the days to come,” the team’s leader, French UN Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, told reporters in Pretoria, obviously gratified, on the first leg of the team’s eight-nation tour. The French diplomat said earlier, in Johannesburg, that “we hope to have a plan for a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign forces, a plan for the disarmament of negative forces and a plan for dialogue” in the DRC. – AFP
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