SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki is to travel to Sun City on Monday in a bid to unblock talks on the future of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) just days before they are due to end.
”South Africa, as the host of the DRC peace talks, has an interest to ensure that the Congolese people find one another and push back the frontiers of war,” presidential representative Bheki Khumalo said in Pretoria on Sunday.
”We have an interest in seeing that peace and democracy return to that beautiful country.”
The 360 delegates in Sun City, representing the Kinshasa government, rebels, political parties and civic groups, are trying to end the war that erupted in 1998, agree on an interim government pending elections, and come up with a formula for integrating rebel fighters into the army.
The talks began in late in February and are due to end on Friday.
Mbeki’s trip will follow consultations he has been holding in Pretoria with delegates representing the DRC government and the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), which is backed by Rwanda.
The major impasse at the talks is the future status of President Joseph Kabila, who took over as head of state after a bodyguard assassinated his father, president Laurent Kabila, in January last year.
Kinshasa is demanding that Kabila head the transitional government, but the rebels and most opposition delegates say that at most he should be considered a ”candidate” for the position.
They want him to come to Sun City to present his case.
The chiefs of the two main rebel groups, Adolphe Onusumba of the RCD and Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement, both returned to Sun City at the weekend for the last week of negotiations, their movements said.
On the army, the rebels want to see the establishment of a national force fusing the government and rebel armies, whereas Kinshasa merely wants to see rebel fighters enrolled in the existing army.
But some progress is being made, delegates say, with agreement reached over the weekend to discuss the powers of the transitional president.
A number of delegates are hoping too that agreement will be reached on defining key posts in the transitional government, and who will fill them, thus providing the ”mutual security” they are seeking.
A plenary session on Monday should endorse agreements reached by working commissions on non-controversial subjects. – AFP
