AFRICA-POLITICS: Kenya Steps Up Pressure To Bring Peace To Zaire

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jan 8 1997 (IPS) - Kenya has stepped up its actions to resolve the conflict in Zaire which has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, who had hosted two regional head of states summits on Zaire late last year, met with his Zairean counterpart Mobutu Sese Seko this week, to discuss the continuing conflict in the strife-torn Central African country.

The meeting, which took place in Mobutu’s hometown palace of Gbadolite, said little, at least publicly, about the fighting between the Zairean army and the rebels of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) in the east of the country.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said this week’s parley was called by Mobutu.

South African leader Nelson Mandela, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Cameroonian President Paul Biya, who is the chairman of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) were also invited.

The four were mandated by last December’s Nairobi summit of nine African leaders, which was boycotted by Kinshasa, to find a solution to the region’s troubles.

In Pretoria, a spokesman for Mandela said Monday’s summit was postponed. He said another date for the summit would be set by a meeting of foreign ministers. He did not elaborate.

President Moi however went ahead with the trip and held a meeting with the ailing Zairean leader, who is suffering from prostrate cancer.

Kenya’s concern about events in Zaire stem from the fear of an influx of refugees and the spread of anarchy through the Great Lakes Region, which comprises Burundi, Rwanda, Zaire, parts of Tanzania and Uganda.

Kenya already hosts over 300,000 refugees from the region, many of them from Burundi and Rwanda, Zaire’s turbulent neighbours.

Moi’s trip to Zaire comes at a time when government troops and AFDL soldiers are preparing for a major showdown in Kisangani, a town on the border with Uganda and Rwanda.

AFDL forces, made up mostly of Zairean Tutsis, known as the Banyamulenge, have captured a swathe of land measuring over 500 kilometres on Zaire’s eastern border with Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. The towns captured by the rebels include Uvira, Bukavu, Goma and Bunia.

AFDL leader Laurent Kabila claimed this week that over 3,000 French, South African and Angolan mercenaries were in Kisangani preparing for a counter-offensive against the rebels.

He said “several thousand” Zairean soldiers and elite presidential guards, backed by the mercenaries, were deployed in a 30km radius around Kisangani, which he claimed was under curfew.

Kabila warned that the mercenaries as well as the Zairean forces would be crushed by the rebels.

Reacting to the rebel leader’s claims, a spokesman in Mobutu’s office said Tuesday that there were no mercenaries in Zaire.

The spokesman, whose name was not mentioned by state-radio, said the only mercenaries in Zaire were troops from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, whom he claimed were fighting alongside the AFDL forces in the east of the country.

Paris, too, has denied any knowledge about the presence of French mercenaries in Zaire. A government spokesman in Paris was Tuesday quoted by a Parisian newspaper as saying the only French military on Zairean soil was a handful of gendarmes guarding the French embassy in Kinshasa and the military attache in the same mission.

France says it it backing Zaire, which is under an international arms embargo, politically.

Meanwhile in Kinshasa, the new Zairean army chief Gen. Mahele Lyoko is said to be “weeding out the deadwoods” from the rank and file of the Zairean army.

The Zairean army has been accused of cowardice, rape, killings and lootings of civilians. Many fled their garrisons without firing a single shot at advancing AFDL forces, since the fighting erupted last October.

Sources in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, said part of President Moi’s trip to Zaire was to urge Mobutu to talk with the rebels. But the Zairean government has reiterated its refusal to negotiate with Kabila.

Kabila, a long-time Mobutu opponent, too, doesn’t seem keen to talk with the Kinshasa regime. He has vowed to carry on his campaign to Kinshasa until the Mobutu regime is toppled.