The leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda pulled their countries back from the brink of war on Friday when they agreed at a crisis summit in Nigeria to respect a peace accord signed in 2002.
”After discussions President Paul Kagame and President Joseph Kabila recommitted themselves to the implementation of the Pretoria agreement,” signed in July 2002 by the two leaders to officially end a four-year war between their two states.
Kabila and Kagame held five hours of talks, hosted by Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, to try to defuse rising tensions between them.
Obasanjo announced on Thursday that he would host the talks, two days after the DRC confirmed it had deployed reinforcements to its volatile eastern region to deal with rebels it claims are backed by Rwanda.
This move, which followed renewed clashes between ”dissident soldiers” and loyalist troops, triggered fears for the future of DRC’s year-old peace process and for the slightly older Pretoria pact between the central African neighbours.
In July 2002, Kabila and Kagame signed a peace pact, under which Rwanda agreed to withdraw some 20,000 soldiers it had in DRC and Kinshasa agreed to round up, disarm and repatriate ethnic Hutu extremists who fled into what was then Zaire after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Rwanda withdrew its troops in October 2002, and Kinshasa has succeeded in arresting some suspects in the Rwandan genocide and in repatriating many lesser players in the 100-day slaughter, but accusations of war-mongering and illegal incursions onto the other’s territory have continued to fly between the two neighbours.
The three presidents announced after the talks in Abuja that a joint verification team would be set up to ensure that Hutu extremists who fled to DRC after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda are disarmed and demobilised, and that there are no more Rwandan troops on DRC soil. – Sapa-AFP