The head of the rebel Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) said Friday he still believes a peace deal struck with the Democratic Republic of Congo government on the sidelines of peace talks in
South Africa will work.
”The MLC still holds to the Sun City accord, which we want to see applied and which will allow the country to be reunited,” he told AFP by telephone after meeting in northern DRC on Thursday
with the special UN delegate to the DRC, Moustapha Niasse.
Landmark peace talks between the domestic parties to the four-year conflict in the DRC were held in the South African resort of Sun City from February to April this year.
They ended without a global peace deal, but with an agreement between the Ugandan-backed MLC and the government of DRC President Joseph Kabila, under which Kabila would remain head of state and Bemba would become prime minister in an interim regime.
But that deal has so far not been implemented and was rejected by the main DRC rebel movement, the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democarcy (RCD), which controls the eastern third of the vast central African nation.
The RCD was offered what it felt were only minor roles in the interim regime, and demanded that a truly inclusive pact be struck.
”The Sun City accord was inclusive,” said Bemba.
”It should be the basis for any fresh negotiations.
Non-signatories to the pact must simply tell us what they don’t like about it,” he said.
Niasse has for the past two months been holding informal talks with the parties to the Sun City talks, which include, in addition to the government and the two rebel movements, the unarmed political opposition parties.
On Thursday, RCD leader Azarias Ruberwa praised Niasse’s shuttle diplomacy, saying his ”efforts … have made it possible to envisage an inclusive political settlement, now acceptable to all parties.”
Ruberwa said the power-sharing deal reached in Sun City between Kabila and Bemba was ”dead” and called on the MLC to ”make an effort to accept the sense of an inclusive accord” not based on the Sun City deal.
The complex war in the DRC broke out in 1998 and at its height drew in seven other nations. It is estimated to have claimed 2,5-million lives. – Sapa-AFP