ZAIRE-POLITICS: Kinshasa Boycotts Nairobi Summit

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Dec 17 1996 (IPS) - Zaire’s boycott of a key heads of state summit here this week highlighted the complexity of the crisis in the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa.

Kenyan President Daniel Moi, who chaired the Dec. 16-17 summit, said he had personally spoken to Zaire’s leader, Mobutu Sese Seko, who had assured him that Kinshasa would send prime minister Kengo Wa Dondo.

President Mobutu is expected to arrive in Zaire Tuesday after spending four months in Europe for cancer treatment. Reports from the capital Kinshasa say that thousands of people are awaiting his arrival at the airport.

His return is viewed widely as an effort to hold the country together as the Banyamulenge rebels continue to score victories in the east in their bid to reach the capital and overthrow Mobutu’s regime.

“I did all I could to get Zaire to attend this meeting,” Moi told the summit, which ended here on Tuesday.

But Zaire’s foreign minister Jean-Marie Kititwa-Tumasi, was quoted as telling journalists on Tuesday that his country had failed to send a representative, because of the presence of rebel leader, Laurent Kabila, in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

Despite the hitch, President Moi said the absence of Zaire’s prime minister did not deter participants from deliberating on the crisis in that country.

A communique issued at the end of the summit on Tuesday expressed concern that the security situation in eastern Zaire had deteriorated further since the Nairobi summit of Nov. 5.

“The summit noted with regret that the cease-fire called for in eastern Zaire by the 5th November, 1996 summit had not been effected. To this end, the summit called upon the parties to the conflict to commit themselves to a negotiated peaceful settlement,” said the statement.

The summit urged neighbours to respect the “territorial integrity of Zaire in accordance with the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) charter and in particular, the Cairo declaration of 1964 on territorial integrity and inviolability of national boundaries as inherited at independence.”

It also called for “non-intervention and an end to cross- border incursions.”

Rwanda and Uganda had confirmed that their troops had crossed into Zaire to flush out Zairean-based rebels, who had taken advantage of the confusion there to invade their respective countries.

President Mobutu has promised to recognise the some 400,000 Banyamulenge’s right to citizenship and nationality, one of the contentious issues which sparked the current conflict.

The Banyamulenge are Tutsis who migrated to Zaire from Rwanda and Burundi over 200 years ago.

“The summit considers (Mobutu’s) assurance as a significant step in the search for a lasting solution to the crisis,” said the final communique.

The summit has entrusted presidents Moi, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Paul Biya of Cameroon, who is the current OAU chairman, to take the necessary initiatives to promote peace, stability and security in Zaire and in the Great Lakes Region.

Other leaders who attended the conference were Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Frederick Chiluba of Zambia, Issaias Afewerki of Eritrea, Pasteur Bizimungu of Rwanda, Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia.

Present also were Ferdinand Oyono, minister for foreign affairs of Cameroon, who represented Biya, Dr Salim Ahmed Salim, secretary- general of the OAU and Julius Nyerere, former Tanzanian president, who is the internationally-backed mediator on Burundi.

Burundi’s military leader, Major Pierre Buyoya, was not invited. The summit also did not referred to Burundi in Tuesday’s communique.

Buyoya, a Tutsi, seized power on Jul. 25, deposing president Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, a Hutu. Five days later, east and central African leaders reacted by imposing sanctions against Burundi to force Buyoya to return the country to civilian rule.

Leonard Nyangoma, leader of the exiled rebel National Council for the Defence of Democracy (CNDD) Tuesday called on the African leaders “to maintain and concretely support the economic sanctions and to impose an arms embargo on the military junta.”