Congo Government Doesn’t Yet Control Kivu, UN’s Obasanjo Says
By Jason McLure
Jan. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Cooperation between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda has helped improve peace prospects in Congo’s troubled North Kivu region, though ethnic Hutu and Tutsi militias remain a threat to destabilize the mineral-rich area, United Nations mediator Olusegun Obasanjo said.
Remnants of the ethnic Tutsi National Congress for the Defense of the People remain at large in eastern Congo despite efforts to integrate them into the Congolese army following the arrest of CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda on Jan. 22, Obasanjo said today in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at an African Union summit.
“There are still issues of the government of Congo being fully in charge of the area that used to be administered by CNDP,” Obasanjo said following a briefing to leaders from 11 countries in the region. “There are still issues of the CNDP soldiers that are not yet integrated. There is the issue of the FDLR. Our job is not yet complete.”
Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, is the UN mediator to the conflict.
A joint Rwandan-Congolese offensive against the ethnic Hutu militia, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, has not yet succeeded in wiping out those forces. The FDLR includes key members of the Interhamwe group that led the 1994 genocide in Rwanda against Tutsis and some Hutus.
Fighting in the region flared in August between Nkunda’s CNDP and the Congolese army. Nkunda was detained by troops from Rwanda, his erstwhile ally, earlier this month and placed under house arrest. More than 250,000 people have been displaced by the renewed fighting, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
“It’s our hope that this is the beginning of a new era of peace and security and stability in the region,” said Moses Wetangula, Kenya’s foreign minister, in an address at the meeting. “A peaceful Congo is a peaceful Africa.”
In Kinshasa today, DR Congo President Joseph Kabila said that troops from Rwanda and Uganda that entered his nation to disarm Hutu rebels will leave it by the end of February.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jason McLure in Addis Ababa via Johannesburg at jkew1@bloomberg.net.
