Tanzania hosts Great Lakes summit in June -envoy
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 5 (Reuters) - A summit aimed at promoting peace and security between the Democratic Republic of Congo and its neighbors is expected to open next June 21 in Tanzania, Angola's U.N. ambassador said on Wednesday.
The goal of the long-delayed meeting is to help the countries of central Africa's Great Lakes region "establish good neighborly relations," Ambassador Ismael Abraao Gaspar Martins, the U.N. Security Council president for November, told reporters.
The Security Council has called for a Great Lakes conference for years as a regional approach to ending Congo's long and bloody civil war.
The idea moved closer to reality after the region's governments met at U.N. headquarters in September to pledge to stop interfering in each other's affairs.
At a meeting called by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, senior officials of Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda as well as Congo adopted a statement pledging to respect one another's sovereignty and political independence.
The officials said they would try to reestablish full diplomatic ties and trade and cultural links with one another, "pursue peaceful means to resolve their disputes" and shun actions that could disrupt each other's stability, national unity or territorial integrity.
They also pledged to cut off weapons sales to armed groups in eastern Congo, where a U.N. peacekeeping force is struggling to quell a wave of clashes that have led to massacres, sexual violence and cannibalism.
Congo's civil war is one of the deadliest conflicts in modern history, drawing in the armies of five neighboring countries and causing the deaths of millions through widespread social disruption as well as from the fighting itself.
In the past year, while fighting has continued in the east, the warring parties have signed a peace deal and a transitional government has been installed in the Congo capital, Kinshasa.
11/05/03 19:00 ET
