November 26, 2001
A visiting European Union (EU) team acknowledged at the weekend that disarming Rwandan Hutu fighters in the Democratic Republic of Congo "could be the key" to ending the conflict in that country.
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, who led the delegation in talks with Rwandan officials, said that Interahamwe militias blamed for Rwanda's 1994 genocide, with ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) troops, were a major problem for Rwanda.
The EU wants to give new impetus to a Congo peace process initiated by the Lusaka accords of 1999, which provided for foreign troop withdrawals and the creation of a transitional government on the basis of an "interCongolese dialogue".
Michel was in Kigali as part of a six-nation tour to promote peace in the Congo and in neighbouring Burundi, which has had a transitional Hutu-Tutsi government since November 1 but seen no cease-fire by its own Hutu rebels.
"The question of the Interahamwes and the ex-FAR present in the Congo and fighting Rwanda is at the origin of insecurity for Rwanda," Michel said after talks with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, which he described as a "real working session". Rwanda and Uganda openly backed rebels who launched a war in August 1998 against the Kinshasa government, but in the past year rival armies have pulled back from the front lines in Congo.
Michel, whose country chairs the EU, was accompanied on the tour by Chris Patten, the EU commissioner for foreign relations, and the senior foreign policy envoy, Javier Solana.
The team also held talks at the weekend with Congo rebel leader Adolphe Onusumba Yemba, who is the president of the Rwandanbacked Congolese Rally for Democracy .
Rwanda has shown reluctance to pull its troops out of Congo on the grounds that it hosts Hutu extremists who threaten it in the wake of the genocide in which up to 800000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.
"President Kagame asked to be able more closely to verify" a census, under way in Kamina in southeastern Congo, of 1776 Rwandan Hutu fighters who were turned in to the United Nations Observer Mission in Congo , Michel said. Congo rebel groups have triggered international concern by announcing that they plan to jointly tackle the problem of the armed Hutus themselves. Michel said the main thing now was to work on implementing the Lusaka accords and on "the inter-Congolese dialogue, particularly a new working method for this dialogue.
"Civil society, the political opposition and the (Congo) diaspora must have guarantees that they won't be marginalised," Michel said, expressing hope that talks would resume in SA late in January.
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