ANTHONY MORLAND, Pretoria | Monday
A UN Security Council mission began a whirlwind tour of eight African countries in South Africa on Sunday, aimed at boosting peace efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Burundi.
Headed by French ambassador Jean-David Levitte who sounded an upbeat note as he arrived in Pretoria the third such mission in as many years will also visit Angola, Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
“We all consider that it is a very important moment for the peace process in the Great Lakes region,” Levitte told a press briefing. “I would say we are quite optimistic on the possibility of achieving progress,” he added.
The trip comes in the wake of a power-sharing deal struck on April 18 by DRC President Joseph Kabila and his former rebel foes in Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC).
The deal was rejected by another rebel group, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), and its Rwandan sponsors.
The RCD has since joined up with several DRC political parties to form a new alliance the Alliance for the Protection of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue (ASD) aimed at reviving marathon peace talks that ended inconclusively earlier this month in the South African resort of Sun City.
The alliance maintains that the Kabila-Bemba deal was struck on the sidelines of those talks and that it effectively sabotaged them.
After listening to a briefing on the plundering of natural resources fuelling the war in the DRC, Levitte late Sunday went into a dinner meeting with RCD president Adolphe Onusumba and other leaders of the new alliance.
They are pressing for the dialogue to be reopened “within days” to search for a deal that includes both rebel groups before Bemba and Kabila set up a new government, said RCD representative Thomas Nziratimana.
“If we give them weeks they will form a government and if they form a government it will be too late,” he said.
One of the leaders of the ASD, veteran opposition politician Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Advancement (UDPS), said he had asked the UN mission to put pressure on the “delinquent” Bemba and Kabila to resume talks.
He alleged that many of those who endorsed their deal had been paid to do so and that the accord had been falsely presented as the legitimate outcome of the dialogue. Levitte declined to take sides in this debate although France has publicly welcomed the outcome of the dialogue and said “we are not in a position to say what happened” in Sun City.
“We encourage all parties to meet again… (to) do it now, don’t wait until it crystalises,” he said.
His reaction to threats that the RCD would not stand by while Bemba and Kabila formed a government without them was a stern warning.
“We were very clear and tough. We said the Security Council would condemn in the strongest terms any party that violates the ceasefire”.
“The obligation to show flexibility and goodwill falls on all parties,” Levitte added, noting, however, that “the fact is, 80% signed (the Bemba-Kabila deal) and 20% did not.”
The delegation is slated to meet with several regional leaders including South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma, and presidents Kabila of the DRC, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, Pierre Buyoya of Burundi and Paul Kagame of Rwanda.
The war in the DRC broke out in August 1998 when Rwanda and Uganda deployed troops there to back a rebellion against then president Laurent Kabila.
He was assassinated in 2001 but troops from Angola and Zimbabwe remain in the DRC to prop up his son and successor.
Burundi’s civil war has killed more than 250 000 people since 1993. It pits Hutu rebels against the Tutsi-dominated army.
The ambassadors will, according to a UN statement, express support for the transitional government set up there in November and “urge the rebel groups to cease immediately the hostilities and to enter into negotiation to ensure the success of the peace process.”
Burundian rebel groups were not party to a peace deal signed in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2000 and efforts to reach a ceasefire with them have not yet borne fruit.
The UN mission is due to meet rebel officials in Pretoria on Monday.
South Africa and Tanzania are playing a mediating role in Burundi’s war. – AFP