Kigali | Tuesday
RWANDAN President Paul Kagame welcomed the announcement that the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would hand over to UN observers some 3 000 Rwandan Hutu rebel fighters.
Speaking at a joint press conference with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who arrived in Kigali late on Monday, Kagame said: “It’s a step in the right direction. That can help us move the peace process forward.”
Annan, who had already visited Kinshasa and Kisangani in a bid to further the peace process in the DRC, where Rwanda has troops, held talks with Kagame immediately after his arrival.
Annan said the DRC government pledged to hand over to UN observers some 3 000 Rwandan Hutu fighters, who fought alongside loyalist troops during the DRC’s complex war that broke out in August 1998.
Kagame said his country, which backs the rebellion against the Kinshasa government, had started to withdraw troops from the DRC and insisted that the international community should “reply to the threat” against Rwanda of the Hutu rebels based in the east of the DRC.
Under the 1999 Lusaka ceasefire accords, all the armed groups active in the east should be disarmed.
The Rwandan president said his government was “open to the return of these people,” though those guilty of taking part in the genocide should be sent before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, or Rwandan courts.
Rwanda, which backs rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), invaded the DRC three years ago on the grounds that Rwandan insurgents with rear bases in the DRC were posing a security threat to the Kigali government.
In rebel-held Kisangani earlier on Monday, Annan was met at the airport by a contingent of Moroccan UN peacekeepers, religious officials and RCD rebels who control the diamond-rich city, the third largest in the former Zaire.
Several thousand civilians massed along roads leading to the airport, shouting “demilitarisation, demilitarisation” and “Rwandans in Rwanda”.
Annan said that in both Kisangani and the DRC capital Kinshasa, he found a “new spirit and a new sense of urgency” to bring peace to the country. “We can build on this new enthusiasm,” he said.
The United Nations has deployed more than 2 500 peacekeepers to oversee a revived ceasefire accord.
Annan is scheduled to leave Kigali on Tuesday. – AFP