Lambert Mende, a leader of one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) many rebel factions said on Friday the next round of peace talks in South Africa, were bound to fail.
The talks are set to resume in Pretoria on Monday.
Mende said there were high expectations in Pretoria that the talks facilitated by the United Nations and the South African government would deliver progress towards ending the protracted Congolese civil war.
However, his Congolese Rally for Democracy/Kisangani-Liberation Movement (RCD/Kis-ML) warned that ”this attempt at mediating peace is following the same inconclusive path as all the costly and fruitless attempts before”.
Mende said the RCD-Goma and the Congo Liberation Movement (MLC) of Jean Pierre Bemba ”viewed themselves as some kind of victors in the process”.
He said the RCD/Kis-ML was offended by attempts by the RCD-Goma and MLC to gain the chairmanship of the DRC’s national assembly and senate as well as their attempts to share important ministerial posts at national as well as regional level with the government of Joseph Kabila.
Mende said the RCD/Kis-ML’s president Mbusa Nyamwisi would meet Bemba in South Africa over the weekend.
In late November, President Thabo Mbeki said the talks were progressing well and said he believed a resolution to the conflict in the DRC and in the Great Lakes region as a whole was in reach. – Sapa