Unarmed opposition and civil society groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) began informal talks on Friday with South African President Thabo Mbeki, aimed at finding common ground between them and the other belligerents in DRC’s war.
”We are going in now,” said South Africa’s ambassador to the DRC, Sisa Ngombane, who travelled with the 50-strong group from Kinshasa.
Gerard Mbumba, representing the Forum for Democracy in the Congo, said the meeting was ”aimed at finding common ground between the DRC government, rebel groups on the one hand and the unarmed opposition and civil groups on the other”.
Neither the DRC government nor the rebels attended Friday’s meeting.
Mbumba said the main point of difference between the opposition and civil society groups and the DRC government was the composition of a new government for the vast central African country.
Opposition and civil society want the DRC government to comprise a president, deputy president, parliament of representatives and a senate, while the South African and DRC governments have proposed a president with four deputies, Mbumba said.
Ngombane said on Wednesday the delegates would meet Mbeki in his role as chairman of the African Union (AU) at the South African president’s invitation.
The meeting was ”part of the ongoing dialogue to find peace in the DRC,” Ngombane said.
”He (Mbeki) has been consulting on various levels as part of the peace process that is under way in the DRC.”
Mbeki, as AU chairman, has been acting as midwife in the process aimed at ending four years of conflict in the DRC, in which an estimated 2,5 million people have died, either directly through the war or indirectly through disease or starvation.
DRC President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame signed a South African-brokered peace pact in Pretoria at the end of July.
Under the deal, Kagame agreed to pull an estimated 20 000 Rwandan troops out of eastern DRC within 90 days and Kabila pledged to help round up and disarm members of the former Rwandan army and their allies, the Interahamwe militias, both blamed for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Both groups fled to the DRC during and after the 100-day slaughter in neighbouring Rwanda. Kabila earlier this year allowed South Africa to host 50 days of peace talks between internal belligerents in the DRC, but an accord reached on the sidelines of those talks between Kinshasa and one rebel group was boycotted by another, bigger rebel movement.
The groups currently in South Africa were present at the Sun City talks which ended on April 18. Some of them signed the accord, Ngombane said.
”Those who have signed and those who have not are all here. Their opinion in the whole process is very important,” Ngombane said. – Sapa-AFP