January 24, 2000
United Nations - With a ceasefire unravelling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the U.N. Security Council attempts on Monday to get key African leaders to put the peace process on track again.
An extraordinary U.N. Security Council session, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, has drawn African presidents and foreign ministers from 10 countries, including Congo President Laurent Kabila. It ends a month of public debates on Africa organised by U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke, this month's president of the 15-member body.
The council is considering a peacekeeping force for the vast central African country, with the United States, which would have to pay a third of the costs, hesitating as long as fighting persists and France saying a complete ceasefire could not be achieved without international troops. The civil war involves some 10,000 troops from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia supporting Kabila against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda. Kabila, himself, in 1997 overthrew the late dictator Mobuto Sese Seko in what was then Zaire.
Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who mediated a July ceasefire accord in Lusaka, said earlier he would demand a large-scale troop deployment as the international community fielded in Kosovo and in East Timor.
"The United Nations and particularly Western governments have a moral responsibility to help Africa, to help the Congo find peace," Chiluba said.
Kabila wants the council first to condemn Rwandan and Ugandan troops in the country and their backing for the rebels. "Mr. Holbrooke should demand the departure of the Rwandans and Ugandans from Congolese territory," he said in Kinshasa.
ANNAN PROPOSES 5,000-STRONG U.N. FORCE
Secretary-General Kofi Annan proposed last week the deployment of more than 5,000 troops to protect 500 unarmed U.N. military observers, of which only 79 have been deployed. He indicated, in a report to the council, that the initial intervention could set the stage for a much larger, more costly operation. The recommended force would return U.N. troops to a country that brought the world body close to political collapse four decades ago and cost the life of Dag Hammarskjold, its second secretary-general, in an air crash on his way to peace talks. Some 20,000 foreign troops intervened in the early 1960s, with 250 fatalities.
Recollections of that venture, after the Congo became independent from Belgium, has the United States wary of authorising troops. Some members of Congress are opposed to the whole deal. "We have to get it right but not find an excuse to act at all," Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview last week.
But Sen. John Warner, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the United Nations first had to consolidate its operations in the Balkans and elsewhere "before we move on to take on any additional responsibilities."
France, on the other hand, wants at least 10,000 peacekeepers in the area as soon as possible, saying the Lusaka accords could not succeed if the United Nations waited for a complete ceasefire.
Expected to address the council, in addition to Albright, Kabila and Chiluba, are:
Presidents Joaquim Chissano of
Mozambique, chairman of the South African
Development Community or SADC;
Eduardo Dos
Santos of Angola;
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe;
Yoweri
Museveni of Uganda;
Pasteur Bizimungu of Rwanda; and
Salim Salim, secretary-general of the Organisation of
African Unity.
Also on the agenda are
former Botswana president, Quett
Masire, the "facilitator" for the Congo peace talks;
Foreign Ministers Theo Ben Gurirab of Namibia, who is
president of the U.N. General Assembly;
Nkosazana
Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa;
Severin Ntahomvukiye of
Burundi;
Louis Michel of Belgium and
Lloyd Axworthy of
Canada.
Mali is sending its defence minister, Minister Mohamed Salia Sokona, and France, its international cooperation minister, Charles Josselin. Britain is represented by Peter Haine, minister of state for Middle East and Africa.
