South African President Thabo Mbeki left the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) late on Wednesday after eight hours of high-level talks on the post-war transition process in the vast Central African country.
Mbeki made no comment to reporters on leaving Kinshasa.
On arrival earlier on Wednesday, Mbeki went straight into talks with President Joseph Kabila, and later met with other members of the DRC’s transitional government.
”The talks were entirely conclusive. Each gave his opinion on the transition process and we arrived at the conclusion that solutions would be found to all the problems,” Vice-President Azarias Ruberwa told reporters after meeting with Mbeki.
Ruberwa, a leader of the former RCD rebel group, also appealed to other government members to speed up the transition process aimed at taking the country to elections in June, the country’s first democratic polls since independence in 1960.
At least four people were killed and 60 arrested in Kinshasa on Monday during violent protests over rumours of a government plan to delay the vote.
South Africa brokered a peace deal for the DRC in April 2003, which ended years of warfare and set up the transitional government to rule until elections are held.
The 1998 to 2003 war in the DRC, which drew in half a dozen other African states at its height, has left an estimated 2,5-million people dead, either in combat or through disease and hunger, according to aid organisations.
Mbeki travelled to the DRC from Côte d’Ivoire, where he has been acting as African Union mediator in the conflict that has divided the West African country since 2002. On leaving Kinshasa, he headed for South Africa.
He took part in an extraordinary Cabinet session with President Laurent Kabila and Prime Minister Seydou Diarra, but the meeting was shunned by ex-rebel members of the government of national reconciliation. — Sapa-AFP