Global Policy Forum

By Simon Tisdall

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, will throw his personal weight behind the search for peace in the Great Lakes region of central Africa when he briefly visits the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda early next month.

Annan's intervention is welcome. It may give impetus to mediation efforts between the warring parties in Congo that are currently being led by Botswana's former president, Ketumile Masire. It will certainly come as a morale boost for the UN monitoring force in Congo, which now comprises over 2,000 personnel, and for international aid agency workers struggling to help hundreds of thousands of hungry and displaced people.

And if it achieves nothing more, Annan's mission will draw attention to a conflict that has its roots in the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the fall of Congo's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko. Since fighting began in earnest in 1998, the war has claimed an estimated 3m lives. That such consciousness-raising is required is a measure of the international community's failure to act effectively to contain and halt a fundamentally avoidable war.

It is not as though nobody knew what was going on in Congo for the past three years. There was no disguising the fact that Rwandan and Ugandan troops had invaded a sovereign country, even if Kinshasa was (as they said) aiding Hutu and other rebels opposed to their governments. Nor was there anything secret about the decision by Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe, backed by Angola and Namibia, to move in their forces in support of Congo's then leader, Laurent Kabila.

The subsequent emergence of foreign-backed separatist rebel groups in eastern Congo, the depredations of "traditional warrior" mercenaries such as the Mayi-Mayi and the linked Hutu-Tutsi civil war in Burundi were hardly developments hidden from the outside world. Nor was the systematic looting of Congo's precious mineral and other natural resources by foreign forces on both sides of the conflict, in particular the Zimbabwean army.

Yet repeated diplomatic efforts at regional and international level failed to have an appreciable impact. Congo was regularly raised in the UN security council as an issue of great concern. The Clinton administration sent top-ranking envoys to the region and the UN hosted a summit of regional presidents. But while the isolationist and thuggish Laurent Kabila, Mobutu's successor, was in charge in Kinshasa, opposing western initiatives and pursuing the war in the east, it seemed that nothing much could be done.

Regional peacemaking efforts led to the 1999 Lusaka accord but the ceasefire it proposed was never respected by the warring parties in Congo. South African elder statesman Nelson Mandela was persuaded to act a mediator in the Burundi conflict. Even his immense personal prestige did not do the trick. Last month, the UN security council backed Mandela's plan for a transitional government in Burundi and urged neighbouring countries to stop supplying the opposing factions. Whether the plan will work remains to be seen.

The assassination of Laurent Kabila last January and the accession to the presidency of his apparently more open-minded son, Joseph, has rekindled cautious hopes of a way out of the Congo morass. These hopes centre on a planned "national dialogue", proposed by the Lusaka agreement, that may finally get off the ground later this month. Preparatory talks for a pre-dialogue meeting on August 20 were scheduled to take place in Gaborone this week.

Joseph Kabila, unlike his father, has accepted Masire's mediation role and, like the Congolese rebels, his forces have, by and large, been observing a ceasefire - although some serious violations have been reported in recent days. The national dialogue is supposed to result in a new constitution, the reunification of eastern and northern Congo with the rest of the country, and agreement on ways to re-integrate rebels into Congo's government and army.

In recent months, some of the outside forces have begun to pull back. Zimbabwe is reportedly reducing its troops and Uganda says it has withdrawn six of its 10 battalions. Meanwhile, the UN force's presence is strengthening and UN and other aid agencies, although as desperately over-stretched and short of funds as ever, are gaining greater access. Europe is also offering resumed aid, egged on by Belgium, the former colonial power in Congo that currently holds the EU council presidency.

On these shaky foundations, it is hoped, a sort of peace leading to a lasting settlement can be built. Hence Annan's timely decision to step in. But, for the UN boss's intervention really to bear fruit in the crucial months that will follow his return to New York, three requirements must be met.

One is that the international community steadily increases its engagement in Congo, rather than shrugging over the intractability of the problem and largely looking the other way - as over the past three years. This means, in part, encouraging Joseph Kabila to increase Congo's political, military and economic cooperation with the UN and with wealthy developed countries. Another requirement is to ensure a big increase in western aid and assistance to the victims of the conflict. They include the 1.3m people the World Food Programme says are currently going hungry - but also the millions of others traumatised by the war.

This means, in effect, the G8 countries putting their money - new money, and lots of it - where their collective mouth is. Last month's Genoa G8 summit made Africa a priority. Congo is a chance to make that talk a reality.

The third requirement for a successful settlement in Congo is a more responsible, less self-interested approach by the country's neighbours. Rwanda's grievances, for example, will not be ameliorated by yet more, endless fighting. They should start by making a complete military withdrawal, on all sides, cease their military support for their proxies, and throw their weight behind the national dialogue.

Congo is not only a test for the G8. It is also a test for the newly proclaimed African Union, successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), and for the objectives espoused by Thabo Mbeki and other proponents of the New Africa Initiative. The initiative calls for African partnerships with developed countries. That is exactly what Congo needs now. It is no good demagogues such as Libya's Colonel Muammar Gadafy simply blaming all Africa's problems on European colonialism and racism, as he did at the OAU summit in Lusaka, and demanding reparation.

Nobody seriously denies that Europe's imperialism has left a terrible legacy. But invoking past history is no path forward. Today's brutal reality is that Africa must take responsibility for Africa. Because, ultimately, nobody else can or will.

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