POLITICS-DR CONGO: New Role for Rebel Forces in Transitional Government

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Juakali Kambale

KINSHASA, Jun 17 2003 (IPS) - If all goes according to plan, the Democratic Republic of Congo should have a government of national unity by Jun. 30.

President Joseph Kabila has been under international pressure to form the government as part of a peace deal, involving rebels seeking to overthrow his administration.

More than three million people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Congo since the latest insurgency started in 1998.

The pressure to form the transitional administration – pending general elections after two years – heightened last week when a visiting U.N. Security Council delegation said a government of national unity would be established in Kinshasa ”by Jun. 30”.

Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, France’s ambassador to the United Nations and head of the delegation, told journalists in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), that President Kabila made the promise after the ambassadors expressed their concern that time was running out for the Congolese peace process.

”We told him that it was important to speed up the process of the transitional government. Most of the work has already been done. Only the final process is left, and we’d like to see it done as quickly as possible in the next few days,” said de la Sabliere.

The delegation has travelled to neighbouring Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania to hold talks with the leaders there.

While in Kinshasa, the delegation met with various parties involved in the Congolese war. Most notably, it held talks with Arthur Z’Ahidi Ngoma, the vice-president designate who will represent the unarmed opposition parties. But Ngoma declined to comment on their talks, citing the fragility of the transitional process.

Ngoma’s nomination has been rejected by other political parties, including the powerful Union for Democracy and Social Progress of former Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi.

The Security Council delegation has urged all the Congolese opposition parties to set aside their political differences. ”We told them that we’ve come to help the Congolese to speed up their political process, but we’re also insisting that it all depends on the Congolese themselves,” said de la Sabliere.

In Kinshasa, the Security Council delegation was welcomed with open arms. Many said the United Nations should have intervened much earlier. ”We had already lost three million people when the ethnic violence in Bunia was causing a stir within the international community,” said Ngoy di Kateta, a journalist, based, in Kinshasa.

More than 300 people were killed in Bunia, eastern Congo, following ethnic conflict between the Lendu and Hema last month.

”In fact, there have been many other Bunias in this country and the Security Council has never come to their rescue. Had it intervened earlier, we wouldn’t have seen the situation deteriorate to this point,” said de Kateta.

The United Nations has deployed peacekeepers to restore law and order in Bunia.

The current conflict in the Congo erupted in Aug. 1998 after the late Congolese leader Laurent-Desire Kabila ordered the remaining Rwandan soldiers and military instructors, who helped him to overthrow President Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, out of the country.

The war sacked in seven African countries – with Angola, Namibia, Chad and Zimbabwe helping the government of Kabila, and Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi backing various rebel groups.

So far, more than two million people have been displaced by the war. About three million, including 10,000 child soldiers, have been killed. Up to 900,000 children have been orphaned by the war, or AIDS. And 16 million people are now malnourished, or hungry, according to official statistics.(