Congo, Rwanda leaders meet in Uganda over rebels
by Rodney Muhumuza

The Associated Press    Translate This Article
5 September 2013

JOHANNESBURG (AP) - The presidents of Congo and Rwanda met in Uganda Thursday to try to revive Congo's stalled peace talks with a rebel movement that is widely believed to be backed by Rwanda.

The meeting in the Kampala, the capital, was called by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni 'to stop the fighting and get back on the negotiating table,' according to James Mugume, the permanent secretary at Uganda's Foreign Ministry.

The summit was also attended by United Nations special envoy Mary Robinson, who has urged a political solution to a crisis that recently threatened to spill over Congo's borders. Last month Congolese troops backed by U.N. forces battled M23 rebels near the eastern city of Goma, and Rwanda—accusing the Congolese military of firing missiles across the border—warned that 'this provocation can no longer be tolerated.'

The M23 rebels last week declared a unilateral cease-fire following a week of heavy fighting with Congolese troops, saying they wanted to 'give peace a chance,' although Congo's government said it wants M23 disbanded.

The summit in Kampala, organized under the banner of a regional bloc called the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, provided a rare opportunity for Congolese President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame to hold face-to-face meetings at a time when their countries are on edge over Rwanda's alleged military involvement in eastern Congo.

Rwanda denies backing the rebels despite multiple U.N. reports citing evidence to the contrary. One U.N. report said the Rwandans join M23 in small groups, hiking across footpaths into Congo. Rwanda also has supplied the rebels with arms and sophisticated equipment, including night vision goggles, the report said.

In the latest fighting, however, Congolese troops were boosted by a special intervention brigade of U.N. troops who, unlike the other 17,000 peacekeepers stationed in the vast nation, have a mandate to attack the rebels. The U.N. brigade shelled rebel positions with artillery as Congolese troops engaged the rebels in hand-to-hand combat, support that may have pushed the rebels to retreat and declare a cease-fire. Late last year the rebels briefly overtook Goma before withdrawing under international pressure.

Mugume, the Ugandan diplomat, said regional leaders were working toward a formal ceasefire between Congo's government and M23. The talks in Uganda have repeatedly stalled amid conflicting positions on who was responsible for past atrocities in eastern Congo. Congo's government will now be less keen on the talks after its army, and the U.N. intervention force, appear to have the upper hand in the most recent clashes with the rebels, according to Jason Stearns, a Congo expert who runs the Usalama Project, a think tank that researches Congo's armed groups.

'The primary drive to get back to the negotiating table is coming from Uganda and Rwanda,' he said. They (Congo's government) feel that they are in a position of strength.' Congo's government would be interested in talks that can lead to 'the decapitation of M23,' he said.

M23 is made up of hundreds of Congolese soldiers mostly from the Tutsi ethnic group who deserted the national army last year after accusing the government of failing to honor the terms of a deal signed in March 2009. Even before the creation of the M23 in 2012, eastern Congo's forest-covered hills were crawling with other rebel groups, ethnic militias and renegade units of the regular army.

Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world from good news reported by the press; and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based-Total Knowledge based-programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.



Translation software is not perfect; however if you would like to try it, you can translate this page using:

(Google) Select a language English to Afrikaans English to Albanian English to Arabic English to Belarusian English to Bulgarian English to Catalan English to Chinese (Simplified) English to Chinese (Traditional) English to Croatian English to Czech English to Danish English to Dutch English to Estonian English to Filipino English to Finnish English to French English to Galician English to German English to Greek English to Hebrew English to Hindi English to Hungarian English to Icelandic English to Indonesian English to Irish English to Italian English to Japanese English to Korean English to Latvian English to Lithuanian English to Macedonian English to Malay English to Maltese English to Norwegian English to Persian English to Polish English to Portuguese English to Romanian English to Russian English to Serbian English to Slovak English to Slovenian English to Spanish English to Swahili English to Swedish English to Thai English to Turkish English to Ukrainian English to Vietnamese English to Welsh English to Yiddish

(Altavista babelfish) Select a languageEnglish to Chinese-simpEnglish to Chinese-tradEnglish to DutchEnglish to PortugueseEnglish to FrenchEnglish to GermanEnglish to GreekEnglish to ItalianEnglish to JapaneseEnglish to KoreanEnglish to RussianEnglish to Spanish

Send Good News to Global Good News.

Your comments.