ADDIS ABABA (AFP) — The United States urged leaders from across the Horn of Africa and Great Lakes region during meetings Wednesday in Addis Ababa to take rapid steps to defuse longstanding and interlocking conflicts.
During talks in the Ethiopian capital, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice encouraged Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to send "Ethiopian troops pledged to the United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) as soon as possible."
In a final statement, Rice said she also urged Zenawi to work with the Arab Islamist government in Sudan to lift their opposition and "allow UNAMID deployments, including non-African troops, to move forward unhindered.
"I also urged the prime minister to avoid any acts that might heighten friction between Eritrea and Ethiopia and to take concrete steps to lessen tensions on the border," she said.
Ethiopia remains in a tense stand-off with its arch-enemy Eritrea, following the dissolution last week of a commission tasked with brokering an agreement on the neighbours' disputed common border.
"There must not be a resumption of hostilities initiated by either side," she added.
The Horn of Africa neighbours fought a border war from 1998 to 2000 that left 70,000 people dead.
In earlier talks, Rice asked new Somali Prime Minister Nur Hassan Hussein to reach out to non-violent political opposition in a bid at reconciliation that has eluded the Horn of Africa nation since Islamist forces were ousted 10 months ago by Ethiopian-backed forces.
It aimed to isolate Islamist militants, including those allegedly supported by Eritrea.
She urged Hussein to draft a new constitution and electoral law by early January and work toward national elections in 2009 while calling for the "timely" deployment of African Union peacekeeping forces.
Rice reiterated calls for countries other than Uganda to contribute peacekeeping troops to Somalia and allow Ethiopian occupation forces to leave the country eventually.
The international community is divided over the usefulness of sending UN peacekeepers to ensure stability in Somalia, which has been wracked by civil war since 1991.
Rice urged clan and business leaders to strike a ceasefire to allow for the delivery of humanitarian assistance as well as to promote long-term stability in Somalia.
Rice also joined the interior minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the presidents of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi in urging the rapid strengthening of DRC security forces to drive out rebel and foreign forces.
The four countries around Africa's Great Lakes region also appealed for international help in doing so.
The talks were being held amid an offensive by the government forces of DRC President Joseph Kabila against allies of a renegade Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, in the east of the country.
Rice and the African leaders also recommitted to a November 9 deal reached by the DRC with Rwanda in Nairobi which sought to balance the need to drive both the general and Hutu militiamen out of the country.
"Building on the communique between the governments of the DRC and Rwanda, the four delegations agreed to strengthen border controls to prevent illicit cross-border movement of combatants or recruits and to refrain from aiding and abetting any armed group," a statement said.
A western military observer who asked not to be named told AFP the problem was that there were not enough government troops to take on both the renegade forces and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
The FDLR has been implicated in the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
In addition to Nkunda's renegade troops and the FDLR militia, members of the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda are operating within the DRC.
The region has been wracked by violence since the early 1990s with the civil war that began in Burundi in 1993, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the regional war that raged in the DRC between 1998 and 2003.
On Sudan, Rice also discuss efforts to bolster the fragile 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Islamist government of President Omar el-Beshir in Khartoum and the mainly non-Muslim south.
But US officials said Beshir boycotted the talks with southern Sudanese representatives in Addis Ababa.
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