Global Policy Forum

By Daniel Bases

The political committee overseeing the Lusaka peace process on Wednesday called on the UN to increase its military presence in the country to take advantage of a renewed commitment by the parties involved in the conflict to pull back their forces. The committee, comprising foreign and defence ministers from the state actors in the conflict and representatives of the Congolese rebel groups involved, said that all involved had reaffirmed pledges to withdraw their forces at least 15 km, and that military chiefs would formally sign this new agreement in the Zimbabwean capital Harare on 5 December. Political committee chairman, Zimbabwean Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, said in Lusaka where the committee had met that this was "a powerful message of commitment to the Lusaka ceasefire protocol," Agence France Press (AFP) reported.

"There is renewed vigour on our part to quickly resolve the Congo dispute. We now urge the UN to increase its military presence because we believe they would be key to monitoring the process of pull-back. This is the time to act," Reuters news agency quoted Mudenge as saying. The meeting regretted continued ceasefire violations, and expressed the hope that progress on implementing sub-plans on the disengagement and redeployment of forces would eliminate such incidents, according to media reports. The conditions were now suitable for the deployment of troops under the UN Mission in the DRC (MONUC), Mudenge added.

The UN Security Council has stipulated the existence of a ceasefire, effective freedom of movement of MONUC forces, and security guarantees for UN troops as conditions for the deployment of peacekeeping troops. Mudenge had emphasised the importance of the political committee because the Security Council would be looking closely at the outcome in the run-up to a meeting on the DRC on Tuesday, 5 December. The current mandate for MONUC expires on 15 December and the Security Council will be considering how to proceed with UN involvement in the Lusaka process.

DRC: MONUC 'freedoms' impinge on sovereignty - Kabila

President Laurent-Desire Kabila said on Wednesday that UN demands for totally free movement for MONUC military observers amounted to an invasion of the Congo's sovereignty, but that his government would do what was necessary for MONUC to deploy, Reuters reported. "With Ambassador Morjane [UN special envoy to the DRC, Kamel Morjane] it's always a question of more freedom, in other words the scrapping of sovereignty," it quoted Kabila as saying on Congolese state television. But Kabila added: "We will give what it is necessary to give," the report stated. However, Kabila has given similar assurances in the past on which the DRC has failed to deliver, and MONUC sources said the UN would need written guarantees on MONUC personnel's freedom of movement, it added. MONUC spokesman Amadou Toure said on Wednesday that Kabila had agreed at a summit meeting in Mozambique on Monday to drop a condition that MONUC observers deploying in the DRC must transit through the capital Kinshasa, Reuters added.