Rwandan-backed rebels who control the eastern third of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have asked Kinshasa not to apply a peace pact reached between the government and a rival rebel group at talks early this year.
The Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), which is backed by Rwanda, told AFP on Sunday it has asked DRC President Joseph Kabila not to enact an accord his government reached on the sidelines of talks in Sun City, South Africa in April with rebels from the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC).
The RCD rejected that accord, under which Kabila would remain president of the DRC and MLC leader Jean Pierre Bemba would be named prime minister of an interim government, which would aim to take the vast, war-torn central African nation through to its first elections in some 40 years.
Last week, signatories to the accord met in Kinshasa to draft a new constitution and fine-tune the pact.
On Sunday, RCD representative Jean-Pierre Lola Kisanga told AFP: ”The RCD demands that the government in Kinshasa stop this partial finalisation and calls on the Sun City signatories to work towards a global and inclusive agreement.”
”We call on President Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba not to promulgate a new constitution,” Lola Kisanga told AFP by telephone from the RCD’s headquarters in Goma.
The domestic parties to the conflict in the DRC in February began six weeks of peace talks in South Africa. At the end of the talks, Kinshasa and the MLC struck their agreement, which was rejected by the RCD after they were offered only a minor role in the proposed interim government.
The latest conflict in the DRC began in 1998 as a foreign-backed rebellion aimed at ousting then president Laurent Kabila, who had overthrown longtime dictator Mobutu sese Seko.
It grew into the worst war in Africa, drawing in seven nations at its peak and killing an estimated 2,5-million people, the vast majority of them civilians, mainly through associated disease and malnutrition.
Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame signed a separate peace agreement on July 30 in Pretoria. – Sapa-AFP