Sun City | Saturday
POLITICAL parties and civil groups from the Democratic Republic of Congo on Friday joined a deal between the Kinshasa government and Ugandan-backed rebels to create a transitional government.
The pact, signed by the government and the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) on Wednesday, effectively leaves the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) out in the cold, raising fears that a four-year-old war in the DRC will reignite, with changed alliances.
The deal will see President Joseph Kabila remain as head of state and install MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba as prime minister, a new post.
Adolphe Onusumba, the leader of the RCD, angrily rejected the agreement, under which his rebels were offered a number of positions, calling it “a coup and an insult to the Congolese people.”
Said RCD security chief Bizima Karaha: “The problems of the Congo are well-known. We came here to solve them and the deal between Kinshasa and the MLC does not solve them. We must continue these talks with or without them. We will not be taken hostage.”
MLC secretary-general Olivier Kamitatu, for his part, maintained: “It is a partial solution, but it means that from today there will be peace for millions of Congolese people.”
Since war broke out in the DRC in 1998, the country has been divided in three zones. The RCD controls the eastern third of the huge central African country, the MLC the northern third, and the government the remainder.
Talks facilitator Sir Ketumile Masire, former president of Botswana, dismissed the accord as a “private meeting” outside the scope of the eight-week-long Inter-Congolese Dialogue held in Sun City, South Africa.
He said it fell “outside Lusaka,” referring to an accord signed in the Zambian capital by Kinshasa, both rebel groups and their foreign allies in 1999, and from which the Sun City talks took their mandate.
But most delegations to the talks in South Africa rushed to sign it, including two rebel splinter rebel groups — the RCD/ML Kisangani and the RCD-National — and the pro-government Mai-Mai militia.
Kabila will retain command of the army and most of his current presidential powers under the pact, but the MLC said he would in future not be able to “sign a single document without Bemba.”
The signatories to the accord privately admit that the two men are likely to clash and that the exclusion of the RCD poses the risk of a renewed war with Rwanda.
Kamitatu said of the Bemba-Kabila cohabitation: “It is our duty to make them get along.”
And Raymond Tshibanda of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party commented: “We are signing. I do not see any other way out at this stage. It is not fully satisfactory because it does not bring everybody aboard, but failing that we have to start here.
“We did not want to go back to Kinshasa after 50 days having failed to come up with anything at all.”
The government’s public order minister, Mwenze Kongolo, said: “What this means is that millions of people in our country can resume a normal life, something which they have not had for years.”
The MLC and government delegates opposed attempts by South African President Thabo Mbeki and Masire to prolong the talks in search of a deal that would include the RCD.
“For us the dialogue is over,” said Kamitatu. He said the alliance and its foreign backers would pursue a peace accord with Rwanda and the RCD.
“The DRC, Angola, Uganda and Zimbabwe will speak to President (Paul) Kagame and try to bring him into our accord. We do not want to aggravate the situation in the eastern Congo and we hope that the peace will prove contagious.”
Angola and Zimbabwe have troops fighting alongside the government army.
The document gives no time-frame for the transition, which is designed to lead to the first elections in the former Zaire since independence from Belgium in 1960.
Delegates embraced each other after the deal was unveiled, repeating over and over “it is a historic moment.” – AFP