Harare | Tuesday
A UN Security Council team kicked off an eight-nation peace-boosting tour of Africa on Monday, and said early meetings with South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe had been useful.
One envoy said South African President Thabo Mbeki had given the team ”an extremely useful” read-out on eight week-long peace talks on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
French ambassador to the United Nations, Jean-David Levitte, who is leading the delegation, said it had also held ”very useful” talks after moving on to meet with Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in Harare.
”Our message to all our partners is the same: think about peace in the region, think about ways and means to push the peace process because people in the region long for peace,” Levitte said.
”We are here as a Security Council to help the parties to bring the peace process to a successful outcome.”
After its stops in South Africa and Zimbabwe the team was expected to travel on to Kinshasa late on Monday.
A devastating civil war has raged in the DRC since 1998, fuelled by troops from Angola and Zimbabwe on the government side and Rwanda and Uganda backing the rebels.
Mbeki put forward proposals at talks on the DRC, which ended on April 19 in Sun City, South Africa, under which the leaders of the two main rebel groups would have become vice presidents.
The conference ended however with a sideline agreement between the Kinshasa government and Ugandan-backed rebels under which Congolese Liberation Movement leader Jean-Pierre Bemba will become prime minister, an alliance rejected by the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), which had been offered minor posts.
The RCD has since joined forces with five opposition parties to press for further talks on a transitional government.
”We in the Security Council agree with Mbeki that the process of Sun City has to be inclusive,” one of the UN envoys said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
As the team headed to Harare Zimbabwe’s Mugabe said was ”interested in peace” in the DRC.
”We are interested in getting peace in the DRC. It is necessary that as we withdraw our troops, both sides, we do not create room for any act that might cut across the peace process,” Mugabe told reporters.
Mugabe said he hoped the UN mission in the DRC (MONUC) could eventually become ”peacekeeping and peace enforcing forces… that is our expectation.”
The peace message was also driven home at a meeting in Pretoria with Burundian rebel delegations.
”We told them they must join the peace process now. Not tomorrow. The transition process started back in November and it is time for them to join that process now,” Levitte said.
Those talks were aimed at promoting peace in Burundi, where a war pitting Hutu rebels against a Tutsi-dominated army has claimed some 250 000 lives since 1993.
The rebels did not sign a political settlement in Arusha, Tanzania in 2000, under which a power-sharing government led by President Pierre Buyoya was installed in November 2001.
The UN envoys met separately with the rebels — the most active wing of the Forces for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) led by Pierre Nkurunziza, and the National Liberation Forces (FNL) together with the breakaway FDD wing led by Jean-Bosco Ndayikengurukiye because Nkurunziza’s delegation refused to sit down in the same room as the wing led by Ndayikengurukiye.
These meetings followed talks earlier Monday with South African Deputy President Jacob Zuma and Gabonese Foreign Minister Jean Ping, representing President Omar Bongo.
Zuma and Bongo are mediators in the peace process and Zuma has been tasked with delivering a ceasefire to the tiny central African country.
Zuma characterised the meeting as ”very good” but did not reveal any further details. – Sapa