Global Policy Forum

By Norimitsu Onishi

Kinshasa, Congo -- More than a week after the signing of a cease-fire accord to end the war in Congo, the fighting continues, the rebels say they have captured more territory and the countries embroiled in the year-old conflict are trading accusations that the agreement has been violated.

Despite the negotiators' insistence that the deal has taken effect, the refusal by the two main rebel groups to sign the accord appears, in effect, to have prevented it from being carried out. The United States and other Western countries have been trying to rally all the parties by applying pressure directly on the rebels and indirectly on their backers, especially Rwanda, said a Western diplomat involved in the negotiations.

As the enthusiasm inspired by the July 10 signing ceremony is eroded by reports of continuing battles in the thick Congo jungles, the enormous costs of keeping the peace are also becoming clearer to an international community acutely conscious of the burdens of Kosovo and of past failed peacekeeping missions in Africa.

"For the big powers that would commit the money and the logistical support, it's a period of wait and see," said an international relief official here in the capital.

According to the agreement, the signing should have been followed quickly by a visit to Congo by international observers and the formation of a joint military commission of the warring parties. No visit has taken place, and it was unclear whether the joint military commission required for instituting the cease-fire, would be in place.

Didier Mumengi, the minister of information, said the commission would not be set up until the rebels signed the accord. But the foreign minister of Zimbabwe, the chief ally of Congo and its president, Laurent Kabila, said the signers would meet in Zambia on Monday to establish the military commission. Mumengi, in an interview on Friday, accused the rebels of refusing to sign on the orders of their sponsors, Rwanda and Uganda. "Their goal remains the same," he said, speaking of Rwanda's strongman, Paul Kagame. "Kagame still wants to overthrow this government and put in place a Congolese president who will be a puppet of Rwanda."

The leader of one of the two main rebel groups, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, asserted his autonomy last week, attributing the failure to sign the accord to dissension in the other rebel organization, the Congolese Rally for Democracy. The rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba, whose organization occupies Congo's northern territories and is backed by Uganda, said the Kabila government and its allies had made the accord meaningless by unprovoked attacks.

"Kabila signed the accord and he started violating it himself," Bemba said by satellite phone. "The problem is not on our side. It's on his." Bemba said he was in Gemena, a town in the north that he said his forces had seized. Mumengi denied that assertion, saying there was still fighting in the area.

Since the war began nearly a year ago, Congo has been gradually carved up, with the rebels and their backers now controlling the eastern and northern areas and the government and its allies holding the rest. Three decades of state neglect under the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had turned most of the country into a no man's land where various rebel groups from neighboring countries and militias roamed freely.

The cease-fire agreement calls on the warring parties to disarm the militias, including the interahamwe, the hard-core Hutu fighters who were largely responsible for the massacres in Rwanda in 1994 -- and who ultimately fled into neighboring Congo -- in which half a million people were estimated to have been killed in 100 days.

International peacekeepers would eventually take over that responsibility, according to the agreement. Most of the peacekeepers would be African, with the West providing the money and logistical support. The cost of the operation -- which the United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said may require 20,000 troops and needs approval by the U.N. Security Council -- has not been assessed, but it is expected to be enormous.

Few expect the United States to send troops, but as the nation that would have to shoulder the biggest financial share, it will play a critical role in shaping a peacekeeping force, which the American officials contend could be kept to 5,000.

From its start, this civil war has put the United States in a delicate position. Things had been clearer during the 1997 war, in which Rwanda and Uganda picked Kabila to head a rebellion that ultimately toppled Mobutu. Back then the Clinton administration, which had held up Rwanda's and Uganda's leaders as representatives of a new generation of African leaders, was ready to embrace Kabila. But Kabila showed little regard for democracy and severed his ties with Rwanda and Uganda. Last August, those two nations opened the current attempt to depose Kabila.

Rwandan officials and their allies in eastern Congo -- many of whom, unlike members of the Kabila government, were educated in the United States, speak English and are "more like us," in the words of an American diplomat here -- lobbied intensely in Washington and New York.

They argued that their actions were based on their fear of a repeat of the 1994 genocide. The Kabila government, they said, was unwilling to address their security concerns, including the continuing presence of the interahamwe. And in the course of the war, the Kabila government gave substance to their concerns by enlisting the interahamwe in its fight. But there are indications now, after a year in which the civil war has sucked in at least half a dozen countries and destabilized all of Central Africa, that Rwanda's actions are being more closely scrutinized.

"There are many, many in the international community who are skeptical of the Rwandans," the American diplomat said. "There are some people who feel that the genocide card has been played by Rwanda and that it's getting old."

If the cease-fire timetable is followed, a national debate will take place, involving Kabila's government, the rebel factions and the numerous political parties in the Congo. But lasting peace in Congo will come only when Rwanda's internal problems, rooted in the longstanding conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi, are resolved. Rwanda's government is dominated by Tutsi, though they are a minority in the country.

"You may even be able to get the interahamwe to disarm," the international relief official said. "But the Hutu resolve to get its share of power, that will not die down."