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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-up 87
18 - 24 August 2001


CONTENTS:

DRC: Preparatory talks on inter-Congolese dialogue open
DRC: "Congo has always served interests of others" - Kabila
DRC: Namibia welcomes preparatory talks
DRC: Wamba finally signs the merger document
BURUNDI: IMC to move base to Bujumbura
BURUNDI: Rebels kill seven in northwest
BURUNDI: Hutu-Tutsi radio station is highest rated
RWANDA: Rebels kill park ranger
RWANDA: US knew government army active in genocide - documents
RWANDA: UN spokesman responds on US declassified documents

DRC: Preparatory talks on inter-Congolese dialogue open

A pre-dialogue meeting between representatives of the DRC government, the
three rebel groups, opposition parties and the civil society opened on
Monday in Gaborone, Botswana. News organisations reported that the talks
were officially opened by Botswana President Festus Mogae and were aimed
at paving the way for a national dialogue. The meeting will decide the
date, venue, agenda and the rules for the national dialogue. The formal
dialogue in turn, should prepare the country for new elections and a new
political dispensation in the DRC as well as the disarmament and
integration of the rebels into the national army. DRC President Joseph
Kabila and his Zambian counterpart Frederick Chiluba attended the Monday
session.

However, by Wednesday, the meeting had failed to reach agreement over the
withdrawal of foreign forces from the DRC. "Some delegates want all
foreign troops out of Congo before the dialogue proper begins, others
don't want the withdrawal date linked to the talks," Abbe Muholongu
Malumalu, a delegate from Kivu-Nord Province told IRIN. Until this issue
is resolved, discussions over the time and place for the long-awaited
dialogue cannot go ahead. Although rebel groups appeared committed to a
complete foreign troop withdrawal, the Congolese government wants the
process to begin with Rwandan and Ugandan troops. "All foreign troops
should withdraw according to the Lusaka agreement," Bizima Karaha, a
representative of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD),
the main rebel group, told IRIN. "But we want all the negative forces
identified, disarmed and repatriated at the same time," he added. [For
more details see IRIN separate headlined "BOTSWANA-DRC: Congo meeting
divided over foreign troops"].

DRC: "Congo has always served interests of others" - Kabila

Addressing a Namibian state banquet hosted in his honour in Windhoek on
Tuesday evening, DRC President Joseph Kabila lamented that his country,
although well endowed with many resources, had had no peace since the
1960s. "The Congo has always served the interests of others, either
international or national, and now it is divided in half, and it is
backward," he was quoted as saying by Namibian news agency NAMPA on
Thursday. Kabila, who was on his first state visit to Namibia, noted that
since independence, the DRC has gone from crisis to crisis, starting with
the death of its first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who served only six
months in office before he died under mysterious circumstances, then
followed by the regime of late President Mobutu Sese Seko "who ruled the
country like his own property," according to Kabila. Nevertheless, Kabila
remained optimistic that with peace, the country can prosper. "The
inter-Congolese dialogue is a struggle to bring people together and to
focus our minds on one objective. We are ready to go all the way to find a
solution and peace for the Congo and the region as a whole," NAMPA quoted
Kabila as saying.

DRC: Namibia welcomes preparatory talks

The permanent secretary of the Namibian foreign ministry, Mocks Shivute,
said in a media statement on Tuesday that his government welcomed and
supported this week's preparatory talks in Gaborone. "That meeting which
brings together the delegation of the government, the armed rebels as well
as various Congolese political, religious, business and other opposition
tendencies to discuss format, constitution, modalities, benchmarks
time-frame of the inter-Congolese dialogue, is an integral part of the
1999 Lusaka cease-fire agreement," NAMPA quoted him as saying. "Outsiders
will leave and the Congolese people must pick up the pieces and build
together towards a peaceful, united and prosperous country for the good of
all and the Great Lakes region as a whole," he added. Shivute also called
the UN "an essential partner in search of peace and human security in the
DRC", but urged that "it must fulfil its responsibilities with all
deliberate speed, adequate resources and political backup".

DRC: Wamba finally signs the merger document

The embattled leader of the Bunia-based Rassemblement congolais pour la
democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML), Ernest Wamba dia Wamba,
finally signed the agreement which set up Front pour la liberation du
Congo (FLC), eight months after other rebels groups signed it Kampala,
rebel officials confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday. According to Andrea Wamba,
a senior RCD-ML official, Wamba dia Wamba signed the merger agreement on
18 August, two days before the preparatory committee meeting of the
Inter-Congolese dialogue opened in Gaborone. He said, however, that the
signing was a formality awaiting an amendment of the agreement to cater
for demands by some members of the RCD-Kisangani who are loyal to Wamba.
"The professor had some talks with Bemba and accepted to sign the
agreement but on condition that our demands are met. He signed it because
the discussions to include our demands on the merger agreement is going on
well," Wamba said.

The FLC was formed in Kampala in January after Jean-Pierre Bemba's
Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) was merged with the RCD-ML. Uganda
backs both rebel movements in Congo. By then, the RCD-Kisangani was facing
an internal leadership wrangle between Wamba and Mbusa Nyamwisi, who had
announced a coup in November last year. Before the attempted coup, Uganda,
Tanzania and Mozambique had intervened and called both Wamba and Mbusa and
their supporters for a meeting in Kampala on 11 October to try and resolve
their differences. During the meeting, which took place at state house in
Kampala under the chairmanship of Museveni, the rival rebel leaders had
reached an agreement to share power. The agreement led to the appointment
of Mbusa as the first vice-president of the RCD-Kisangani, and Ateenyi
Tibasiima, another official opposed to Wamba, as the second
vice-president.

BURUNDI: IMC to move base to Bujumbura

The Implementation Monitoring Committee (IMC) for the Burundi peace
agreement will move its base to Bujumbura two weeks before the transition
government is installed there on 1 November, the independent Hirondelle
news agency quoted the committee's chairman, Ambassador Berhanu Dinka, as
telling journalists on Tuesday at the close of the fourth IMC meeting in
Arusha, Tanzania. He said preparations were under way for moving the IMC
to Bujumbura. "However, certain conditions required by the IMC on the
ground in Burundi have to be met before repatriation," he said.
Ambassador Dinka stated that a key condition was security for exiled
Burundians returning home, and the establishment of a protection force to
ensure their safety. He said the protection force was expected to be in
place three weeks before 1 November. He said that work was yet to be
completed on the five substantive items that were on the IMC agenda.

These include three government reports which the IMC rejected and asked
the Burundi government to redraft them. Dinka said he had written to the
Burundi government and parliament in this regard, at the behest of the IMC
members, Hirondelle said. The government was expected to amend and
resubmit these documents by 8 October when the IMC holds its next session,
Dinka said. The IMC agreed on a draft law on the status of its members
when they return home. The delegates agreed that the IMC members would be
regarded as among the "highest officials in the country, but below the
president", he explained. He noted that the government had agreed to issue
them with diplomatic passports. "I am very optimistic that things are
moving in the right direction," he said.

BURUNDI: Rebels kill seven in northwest

Seven people were killed and several others wounded following an attack by
rebels in the northwestern Muramvya Province, Burundi radio reported on
Wednesday. It said the individual targeted was a businessman, Chaotier
Soko Modinga. The assailants attacked his pub and residence
simultaneously, killing seven people, including his children and guard. In
another attack in Buzimba, southwest Burundi, rebels looted livestock and
goods. They also kidnapped women, Burundi radio said. Rebel movements,
often accompanied by looting of cattle and supplies, have also been noted
in Rutana Province.

Burundi: Hutu-Tutsi radio station is highest rated

An independent radio station in Burundi, the Radio Publique Africaine
(RPA), which is said to be a symbol of national reconciliation with both
Hutu and Tutsi staff members, has become the most listened-to station in
the capital, Bujumbura, ahead of state radio and other private stations,
Radio France Internationale (RFI) reported on Tuesday. Established in
March of this year with funding from the Ford Foundation, RPA has
integrated former Hutu rebels and former Tutsi soldiers into the station's
30-member editorial board. "When they recount their adventures, one will
tell the other 'So you were fighting in this area? I was on the front line
just opposite you, so we could have killed each other.' And now, they are
friends. They realise there are other things to do in life than killing
one another. So I do not see any real problem between Hutus and Tutsis.
The real issues are future prospects. The youth have no future prospects,"
station founder Alexis Sinduije told RFI.

While national reconciliation remains the station's priority, Sinduije
said that RPA "is not a humanitarian radio. We also try to highlight
societal issues such as corruption, exploitation, non-ethnic political
problems, struggle for individual interests. Instead of broadcasting a
vertical type of information, we provide horizontal information that
involves everybody - specialists as well as people considered to be
voiceless. We try to give a voice to the voiceless who have had no medium
to express themselves."

RWANDA: Rebels kill park ranger

A Rwandan park ranger was killed when he and other mountain gorilla
trackers were ambushed by Hutu rebels, the German Press Agency (dpa)
quoted military sources in northern Ruhengeri as saying on Wednesday.
Matthias Mpiranya, a park ranger with the Karisoke Research Centre, was on
his routine rounds of tracking the gorillas when he died on Monday in an
exchange of gunfire with hiding rebels, dpa said. "The incident took place
on the slopes of the Kalisimbi volcano near the border with the DRC," it
quoted officials at the Karisoke centre as saying.

Meanwhile, the number of gorillas in the Virunga National Park, which
straddles Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC has increased. Rwanda News Agency
(RNA) quoted the director of national parks in the Rwanda Wildlife
Authority (RWA), Jean Bizimana, as saying on Wednesday: "The number of
mountain gorillas in the Virunga chain of volcanoes has increased from 320
to 355 since 1989."

RWANDA: US knew government army active in genocide - documents

Newly declassified documents show that three weeks into the 1994 genocide
in Rwanda, a US official telephoned one of the men later indicted as a
mastermind behind the genocide and urged him to stop the killings, the
Associated Press (AP) reported on Monday. According to the documents, the
deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Prudence
Bushnell, confronted Rwandan army Colonel Theoneste Bagosora on 28 April,
saying the US knew the Rwandan military was taking part in the killings.
"She said that, in the eyes of the world, the Rwandan military engaged in
criminal acts, aiding and abetting civilian massacres," AP quoted one
document as saying. Bagosora claimed the mass killings of Tutsis then
under way were being conducted by the populace, without support of the
newly installed extremist Hutu military government.

The document and 15 others concerning US actions during the Rwandan
genocide were released on Monday by the National Security Archive, a
private group which collects declassified US military and diplomatic
documents, AP said. "We knew who to call. We knew how to call them, and we
did call them," a researcher with the archive, William Ferroggiaro, was
quoted as saying of the conversation between Bushnell and Bagosora. The
killings went on as the US lobbied for the removal of what few UN forces
were in the country. They ended that July, when Tutsi rebels captured the
Rwandan capital, Kigali. Some 800,000 Tutsis had been massacred in the
100-day campaign. Bagosora is currently waiting trial at the Arusha-based
ICTR facing charges of being one of the masterminds behind the genocide.
Bushnell is now US ambassador in Guatemala.

RWANDA: UN spokesman responds on US declassified documents

Meanwhile, a UN spokesman, Fred Eckhard, on Wednesday in response to
questions on the recent press reports citing declassified US documents
which indicated US awareness of the extent of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda,
said that the UN Secretary-General had been saying all along that the
failure of the international community to intervene in Rwanda resulted not
from the lack of information, "but from a lack of will". He said that a
report by former Swedish prime minister, Ingvar Carlsson, had explored the
response to the genocide in depth, and the Secretary-General had accepted
its findings.

Nairobi, 24 August 2001


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2001


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