Kigali, JEAN BAPTISTE KAYIGAMBA | Monday
CONGOLESE rebels threatened on Sunday to turn back a United Nations boat that set off last week to open the mighty Congo river, closed to traffic by nearly three years of civil war.
Congo’s largest rebel group said they would bar the voyage unless the United Nations Mission in Congo (Monuc) investigated alleged violations by government troops of a ceasefire aiming to end the chaotic conflict.
”We will not let the boat reach Kisangani before Monuc does its work,” said Joseph Mudumbi, representative for the Rwandan-backed Rally for the Congolese Democracy (RCD).
The U.N. team set off on Thursday for the northeastern city of Kisangani in the heart of rebel territory, aiming to evaluate whether the river was safe for civilian use.
Their journey will take them 950km upstream through dense jungle and is expected to last 12 days.
The RCD has repeatedly tussled with Monuc, accusing it of turning a blind eye to Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s alleged support for militia groups operating behind rebel lines and atrocities by government forces.
”The opening up of the Congo river will only benefit Joseph Kabila and would facilitate infiltration,” Mudumbi said.
Kabila’s government dismisses the RCD’s allegations.
Dubbed Africa’s ”World War One,” the conflict in Africa’s third largest country has sucked in six-foreign armies and killed hundreds of thousands of people.
With a flow of water second only to the Amazon, the Congo was an important means of transport even before 19th century explorers opened up thousands of miles of waterways to foreign trade with steamboats.
Trade on the river, immortalised in Joseph Conrad’s novel of colonial excess ”Heart of Darkness”, was halted by the war.
A peace agreement signed by the warring parties in the Zambian capital Lusaka in 1999 called for the free movement of people and goods throughout Congo.
The peace process made little progress until the murder of President Laurent Kabila in January and his replacement by his son Joseph, who allowed the deployment of U.N. peace monitors. – Reuters
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