DR Congo rebel stalling overshadows peace talks
GOMA, DR Congo (AFP) — Demands by a key rebel leader in DR Congo have set back a peace conference, but a top official said a deal would be cut Wednesday regardless of whether renegade ex-general Laurent Nkunda signed it.
"The act of engagement will be signed today," DRC National Assembly speaker Vital Kamerhe told journalists in Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province where the conference has been held for more than two weeks.
The end of proceedings, due on Monday when every armed movement in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo was given sight of a ceasefire and troop pullback plan, was twice delayed by Nkunda's National Council for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and by Mai-Mai warriors from various tribes.
Kamerhe, who chairs the conference committee of elders, said the meeting of more than 1,000 delegates from armed groups, the military, local community and business leaders, and politicians, "will officially end today."
He insisted the peace pact must be sealed, "regardless of whether the CNDP signs on", but added that follow-up on separate "recommendations" for the two drawn up among delegates in plenary sessions would go on.
Conference delegates passed a motion pressing for a "ceasefire" and "the dismantling of armed groups", unanimously agreed among those at Wednesday's plenary session.
Foreign diplomats have warned such "recommendations" to restore peace and the authority of the state in the DRC's Nord- and Sud-Kivu provinces will come to nothing unless fighters signed the "act of engagement".
Such a pact would be the first collective and public commitment of its kind affecting the east, where clashes and atrocities that have displaced more than a million people have continued unabated since the end of a 1989-2003 war.
"The CNDP (on Tuesday) asked for 24 hours to consult its camp. They are calling us (now) to pursue the talks," Kamerhe added, without giving details.
Nkunda's team was due to return to Goma on Wednesday after consultations in the wake of talks behind closed doors with conference officials on Tuesday.
Some of the Mai-Mai, a tribal militia, also stalled on Tuesday.
The settlement hinges on an exit strategy for Nkunda, who claims to be protecting the region's Tutsi minority, but is wanted by the government for war crimes.
Kinshasa has offered an amnesty to fighting forces, but this does not cover war crimes, while CNDP members who reported back to their boss in the region's highlands also on Tuesday asked that the "act of engagement" be signed by the government and not just in its presence, as provided.
The United States and other Western powers have pressured both President Joseph Kabila, whose army has deployed 25,000 men to battle Nkunda's estimated 4,000 troops, and the rebel leader to make peace.
They have even raised the possibility of Nkunda going into exile.
But Nkunda regards some 6,000 armed Rwandan Hutus based in eastern DRC, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDFL), as his primary foes. His aides regularly accuse the DRC army of using these "genocidal killers" as auxiliaries, while his foes charge he has backingfrom Rwanda's Tutsi government.
Kigali denies this but holds some of the Rwandan Hutus responsible, when they served either as government troops or militia, for the genocide in their country in 1994 of around 800,000 people, mainly Tutsis.
Conference delegates, in preliminary reports, demanded the repatriation of foreign fighters in eastern DRC and the return in safety of Congolese displaced people and exiles.
The rapporteur general of the proceedings, Sekimonyo wa Magangu, said that conference delegates "will be able to study and adopt workshop reports on Nord- and Sud-Kivu".
The "act of engagement" provides for an immediate ceasefire, gradual troop withdrawals, the patrolling of buffer zones by UN troops already in the DRC as part of the world's largest peacekeeping force deployed by the United Nations, and an end to arms imports by the militias.
