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CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA
IRIN-CEA Weekly Round-Up 246
25 September - 1 October 2004


CONTENTS:

DRC: Rival military commanders make peace
DRC: Thousands begin receiving relief aid in North Kivu
BURUNDI-DRC: Plea for aid for returning refugees
GREAT LAKES: Senate presidents take regional approach to nationality
GREAT LAKES: Four more countries join regional conference initiative
UGANDA: Government to disarm "warriors" in the northeast
UGANDA: UNICEF seeks US $7.8 million for conflict-hit north


DRC: Rival military commanders make peace

Commanders of two military regions of North and South Kivu provinces, 
eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, agreed on Monday to stop 
fighting, a military spokesman said.

The spokesman for the 10th Military Region based in South Kivu, Lt Kasanda 
Wa Kasanda, said the agreement was the result of a weeklong visit to the 
region by the chief of the nation's land forces, General Major (equivalent 
to Maj-Gen) Sylvain Buki. He toured the region in a bid to end clashes 
between the 8th and the 10th military regions.

Buki summoned brigadiers general Mbuza Mabe, commander of the 10th, and 
Obed Rwibasira of the 8th to the town of Minova, in North Kivu Province, 
on Monday to broker the agreement. Both men had refused to coordinate 
their military actions and had their respective forces fighting each other 
over control of some localities near the town of Minova in South Kivu, 
near the border with North Kivu.

[Full item on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43402]


DRC: Thousands begin receiving relief aid in North Kivu

Thousands of people recently displaced by fighting in the eastern province 
of North Kivu in the DRC began receiving relief aid on Wednesday, the head 
of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in 
the main town of Goma said.

Essential non-food items such as blankets, jerry cans, plastic sheeting 
and soap, have begun being distributed to some 21,000 displaced people, 
the OCHA official, Patrick Lavand'Homme, told IRIN.

Distribution of foodstuffs are to begin on Sunday, Robert Dekker, the 
official in charge of the Goma sub-office of the UN World Food Programme, 
said.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43441]


BURUNDI-DRC: Plea for aid for returning refugees

Some 360 refugees, who recently returned to the DRC from Burundi, are 
living in pathetic conditions in an abandoned warehouse and risk dying 
from diseases such as cholera, malaria and diarrhoea if nothing is done to 
relocate them immediately, Refugees International, an advocacy group, 
reported on Thursday.

"From their arrival on Saturday night to the time of this writing the 
three hundred and sixty refugees have been without any means preventative 
disinfections or cleaning," RI reported in a statement.

According to RI, the doors and windows of the warehouse, which once served 
as a cotton depot, were looted in 1993 and its roof is perforated by 
bullet holes, yet no plastic sheeting has been provided to protect the 
refugees against the elements.

[Full item in English on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43456]


GREAT LAKES: Senate presidents take regional approach to nationality

The presidents of the senates of Burundi, the DRC and Rwanda met for the 
first time on Sunday in Brussels, along with their Belgian counterpart, 
Anne-Marie Lizin, to discuss the rule of law and nationality issues in the 
Great Lakes region.

She told reporter that the meeting focused on the drafting and 
implementation of the constitutions and electoral processes in Burundi and 
the DRC.

[Full story on:
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43360]


GREAT LAKES: Four more countries join regional conference initiative

Four more countries have been accepted as "core" members to the UN-African 
Union (AU) International Conference on the Great Lakes region, bringing 
the number of core countries to 11, the office of Ibrahima Fall, the 
Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to the Great Lakes, 
reported on Friday.

The new entrants - Angola, the Central African Republic, the Republic of 
Congo and Sudan - will "usher in a fresh dynamism to the process which has 
already had a vibrant start", Fall's office said.

Requests by the four countries to be core members correlates with the fact 
they have always been directly impacted by events within the Great Lakes 
region, particularly in the DRC. Besides the new members, the core 
countries of the International Conference on the Great Lakes region are 
Burundi, DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

[Full story on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43448]


UGANDA: Government to disarm "warriors" in the northeast

The government is to resume disarming lawless "warriors" in Uganda's 
northeastern Karamoja region, which borders Kenya and Sudan, because the 
easy availability of guns had claimed hundreds of lives in ethnic clashes, 
Uganda People's Defence Forces spokesman Maj Shaban Bantariza told IRIN on 
Sunday.

He said disarmament committees were being formed at district and 
sub-county levels throughout the region to revive an effort that started 
in December 2002. The drive to rid pastoralists in Karamoja of some 40,000 
illegal guns went into limbo when the government shifted its attention to 
fighting the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in the north or the 
country.

"Voluntary disarmament will be embarked on first in October, but we shall 
resort to forceful disarmament after the period for voluntary disarmament 
elapses," he said.

[Full item on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43367]

Meantime, the army announced on Wednesday it killed 21 LRA fighters in 
renewed fighting in the north and captured a son of LRA leader Joseph 
Kony. Bantariza said some of the rebels, led by Kony, were killed in the 
Okidi Hills in Gulu District on Tuesday when the army engaged them just 
after they entered Uganda from southern Sudan.

[Full item on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43411]


UGANDA: UNICEF seeks US $7.8 million for conflict-hit north

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) appealed on Wednesday for US $7.8 million 
for projects to help some 1.6 million internally displaced persons in the 
strife-torn north. The agency said just $6.5 million of a $14.3 
million-dollar consolidated appeal launched in May had been received.

UNICEF said during the past 12 months it had expanded and accelerated its 
response in health, water and sanitation, education and HIV/AIDS 
prevention and that these sectors remained inadequately funded.

Violence, displacement and poverty caused by the 18-year armed conflict 
between the government and the LRA continued to exacerbate the already 
strained humanitarian situation of children and women in northern and 
northeastern Uganda, UNICEF said.

[Full item on: 
http://www.irinnews.org/print.asp?ReportID=43412]


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2004


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