May 22, 2004
The onus on brokering reconciliation between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda lies with officials of the two neighbouring states and not the international community, the UN peacekeeping chief said here Saturday.
"It's not the international community that will broker national Congolese reconciliation or reconciliation between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda but rather the Congolese and the Rwandans," Jean-Marie Guehenno, UN under secretary general for peacekeeping, told DRC leaders.
Rwanda deployed troops in DRC in 1996 and 1998, justifying the move with the need to neutralise the security threat posed by Hutu rebels accused of carrying out much of Rwanda's 1994 genocide. The last Rwandan soldier left DRC in October 2002, under the terms of a peace pact which bound Kigali to pull out of its vast western neighbour and Kinshasa to disarm and repatriate former Rwandan Hutu rebels.
But as recently as earlier this month, military sources in eastern DRC said at least five people were killed in an attack by Rwandan rebels on an army patrol near Goma, in the east of the country. "The international community can only act in support of the central role that will be played by the citizens of the DRC and Rwanda," Guehenno said, adding that he had congratulated DRC President Joseph Kabila and other government members on the progress of transition started in April last year. "I fully hope that in the coming months, with the efforts of the Congolese and the international community ... peace and prosperity returns to the country."
Guehenno will head on to northeastern Bunia, the main town of the Ituri region, where intertribal violence has left 50,000 dead and 500,000 displaced since 1999 and a 4,700-strong UN peacekeeping force (MONUC) is deployed. The UN official will head next to the eastern DRC cities of Bukavu and Uvira before returning to Kinshasa, where he will attend the unveiling of a monument to the memory of 37 MONUC soldiers who have died in the DRC since the peacekeepers arrived in late 1999.
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