| CONGO-DEM.REPUBLIC 16/3/2005 12:09 | |
| PEACE MISSION TO DISARM RWANDAN REBELS? | |
| Peace/Justice, Standard | |
|
The two-day meeting organized by the African Union to evaluate the possibility of sending a peacekeeping mission in the eastern areas of the democratic republic of Congo to disarm Rwandan rebel groups accused of having participated in the 1994 genocide. The rebels represent one of the gravest menaces to the Congolese peace process and to the entire stability of the Great Lakes region. Organizers from Addis Abeba, where the headquarters of the AU are located, have indicated that this was a preliminary meeting and that the full discussion will take place before the Peace and Security Council of the AU. Yesterday the UN office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published a report suggesting that Rwandan rebels submit 226,000 people every day to vexations and harm. The AU had already announced its availability ‘in principle’ in the past months, meaning that the real issue remains the finan cing of such a mission. The operation would provide for a mission to be dispatched to eastern Congo to assist the army of Kinshasa and UN peacekeepers (MONUC) in the delicate disarmament operations against the rebel Rwandan militias that continue to be the cause, or provide the pretext for, the political and military tensions between Congo and Rwanda. The unresolved issue of the presence in eastern Congo (especially northern and southern Kivu) of such groups as Interhamwe or former FAR continues to represent the main obstacle in the way of a full peace process, which might be supported by the international community, which followed the accords that ended what some described as the first African world war. The conflict caused the death of over 3.5 million people between 1998 and 2002. Rwanda continues to accuse Kinshasa of not having done enough to disarm Rwandan rebels, while others, instead, accuse Kigali of having fueled the fire of these sporadic armed formations as a pretext for continuing to manage the lucrative interests (mostly mining) established during the conflict years. In fact, the question of former genocide perpetrators remains the main threat to peace in the great Lakes, as the growing tensions of last November also demonstrated. [CO] | |
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