Around 50 soldiers loyal to Congolese former rebel chief Jean-Pierre Bemba were withdrawn from Kinshasa on Thursday after President Joseph Kabila gave an ultimatum for Bemba’s forces to be removed from the city.
Foreign diplomats intensified efforts to head off another armed confrontation between soldiers and supporters of the two political rivals, who faced off in a historic presidential run-off vote in Democratic Republic of Congo on October 29.
Bemba, who had been serving as vice-president in the transition government, refuses to accept a provisional result showing Kabila has won the election, the country’s first free polls in more than 40 years.
Bemba’s supporters, including bodyguards, rioted amid heavy gunfire on Tuesday at the Supreme Court, which was set ablaze. The court must confirm the provisional election result, after first deciding on Bemba’s complaint that there was cheating.
Kabila late on Wednesday gave United Nations peacekeepers 48 hours to remove Bemba’s soldiers — estimated at around 600 — from the riverside city. If not, he said the army would do it.
”The first 49 soldiers have been moved out of town to Maluku,” a military base for Bemba’s forces outside of Kinshasa, a UN official, who asked not to be named, said on Thursday. A Congolese security source also confirmed the transfer.
The sources said the withdrawal operation was carried out by the Congolese army without help from foreign peacekeepers.
Congolese army troops, some armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, guarded the streets of Kinshasa, which have been the scene of fierce gunbattles between Kabila’s and Bemba’s forces in recent months. UN and European Union soldiers were also patrolling.
Bemba’s spokesperson Moise Musangana played down the significance of the withdrawal to Maluku and insisted that Bemba, as the still sitting Vice-President, had the right to a bodyguard.
Passive peacekeepers?
He objected to the way Kabila had given the ultimatum to William Swing, the head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo (Monuc), at a meeting which did not include Bemba.
”If there is a decision that needs to be taken, it must come from a meeting with everyone present,” Musangana said.
Despite the presence of the world’s largest peacekeeping mission in the DRC — a more than 17 500 strong UN force backed by a smaller European Union contingent — many analysts say peace in the country will be impossible unless private armies maintained by the rival factions are disbanded.
The historic elections were intended to usher in a new era of stability and prosperity after a 1998-2003 war which triggered a humanitarian crisis that has killed around four million people through violence, hunger and disease.
Congolese authorities are angry over the apparent inability of the huge and costly UN peacekeeping mission to control Bemba’s fanatical followers in Kinshasa. They want the UN to disarm the Bemba fighters.
UN officials say the mission does not have a clear mandate to do this and that this is the Congolese authorities’ task.
Foreign governments with troops serving as DRC peacekeepers were closely watching the situation.
”We can only call on both sides, Bemba and Kabila and their supporters, to stick to the promises they made before the election — namely to accept the result regardless of how it turns out,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters in Berlin. – Reuters