Regional leaders meet over DRC crisis

The preparatory meetings of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Conference (ICGLR) Heads of State summit kicked off on Wednesday in Kampala with defence experts presenting a report on how the eastern DRC can be pacified.The experts’ presentation is among other reports from the Goma meeting last month that will be handed over to the ICGLR Heads of State who are expected to arrive in Kampala today. Defence minister, Gen. James Kabarebe is among other high profile members of the Rwandan delegation that attended the ministerial meeting.Defence and Military Spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Joseph Nzabamwita, said yesterday that the Chairperson of the defence experts working group had presented the report to the subcommittee of Ministers of Defence. “They have made decisions on the deployment of the joint verification mechanism to carry out patrols and border monitoring along the borders of Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda with Eastern Congo and also conduct monitoring and evaluation,” he said.The ministerial committee is composed of defence ministers from Angola, Burundi, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda (chair) and Tanzania, all of which are members of the eleven-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).“After the adoption of these terms of reference, we expect an important step when it comes to the work of the ICGLR regarding the current conflict in eastern Congo,” Nzabamwita added.The ICGLR summit in Kampala last month mandated the subcommittee to propose steps to ensure that fighting stops and to provide details on the operationalisation of the neutral International force.Chrispus Kiyonga, Uganda’s Defence Minister and the Chair of the subcommittee of Ministers of Defence, told The New Times that there they expected an agreement among all member states on the composition of the neutral force but that no country had so far promised to send troops.“The force is going to be agreed upon by all us. It is at that stage if anybody has an objection that they will come forward,” he said.Nzabamwita said that apart from coming up with a neutral international force as one way of addressing the root causes of the conflict, the previous meetings had also examined several other solutions to the conflict.“These include looking at the agreement of the 23rd March 2009 because the failure to implement the recommendations of the Special Envoys - former Presidents Benjamin Mkapa (Tanzania) and Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria), has actually created the formation of M23,” he said.By press time yesterday, defence ministers were finalizing their report on the mandate given to them by the Heads of State to find a lasting solution to the conflict in the DRC.

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Regional leaders meet over DRC crisis