Fourth regional summit on DRC opens in Kampala

President Paul Kagame today arrived in the Ugandan capital Kampala to participate in the Summit of Heads of State and Government of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) on the crisis in Eastern DRC, the President’s office said in a statement this morning.Also expected at the meeting, convened by the ICGLR chair, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, are Presidents Joseph Kabila of DRC, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi and Salva Kiir of South Sudan. ICGLR is a regional grouping of 11 countries, whose leaders have met at least four times in a space of three months to try and find lasting solution to the crisis, which broke out in April when elements in the Congolese army mutinied accusing the government of reneging on a March 2009 peace deal under which the former CNDP and PARECO rebels had been integrated in the official army. But the M23 rebellion is just a fraction of DRC’s recurrent woes, with the country infested with more than 40 armed groups, including local and foreign militias who have visited untold suffering on the local population.Among these groups is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) terrorist outfit composed of elements largely blamed for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in which more than a million people were slaughtered. The Kampala meeting comes just days after UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hosted a high-level summit on the Congo – on the sidelines of the 67th UN General Assembly – in New York, which rallied support for the region’s DRC peace roadmap, but fell short of cooling tensions caused by the latest conflict.UN experts and Kinshasa have accused Kigali of backing the M23 rebels, but the latter has strongly denied the allegations, and instead blamed the Congolese government of provoking the mutiny and integrating FDLR militants in their ranks. Rwanda has also accused Kinshasa of fuelling anti-Rwanda sentiments, which have led to targeted attacks, torture and killings of Congolese of Rwandan origin. The M23 rebels, who have previously called for talks with the government, last week threatened to expand their territory accusing the latter of failing to protect civilians – which would effectively end a two-month lull in fighting.The group had declared a unilateral ceasefire, citing a request by President Museveni, who was asked by the last ICGLR summit to continue engaging the two warring parties with a view of reaching a political settlement.It is not clear whether Museveni has made significant progress in that aspect, but the regional grouping has clearly stated it prefers a political solution to a military option even as it has taken preliminary steps towards deploying a proposed African neutral force to help return peace to eastern DRC.A few weeks ago, ICGLR launched an expanded Joint Verification Mechanism composed of 24 senior military officers – based in the eastern Congolese city of Goma – with DRC and Rwanda, each contributing three, while the nine other states are represented by two officers each.It is hoped that this joint verification team will help remove mutual mistrust between regional states and provide information that would help inform any future action.Tanzania is the only country that has pledged to contribute troops for the neutral force, but questions about its funding remain.The UN, which maintains a 20,000-strong stabilisation force in the Congo, Monusco, and is supposed to sanction any fresh military deployments in the country, is not very keen on the proposed force, even as it has demanded more details about it.

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Fourth regional summit on DRC opens in Kampala