December 16, 2002
Several thousand troops continued mass maneuvers in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Sunday, in a demonstration of government concern at possible rebel attacks, AFP reported.
The show of force came as talks on a power-sharing agreement between the Kinshasa government and the two main DRC rebel groups continued in South Africa despite having passed a Saturday deadline to end.
"We have had numerous indications over the last few weeks that men have been infiltrating Kinshasa to create disorder and we have intercepted several canoes loaded with weapons coming from neighboring Congo," Vital Kamerhe, the government commissioner in charge of following up the DRC peace process, told AFP on Saturday.
"We have sent this information to MONUC (the UN Mission in the DRC) and the third party in charge of implementing the peace accord but these military maneuvers show we are vigilant and determined," he added.
Interior Minister Theophile Mbemba had earlier told AFP the government of President Joseph Kabila had, for several days, feared disruption by rebels unhappy with the peace accord being worked out in South Africa -- particularly elements of the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) of Jean-Pierre Mbemba.
Mbemba said there was concern that rebels "unhappy with the government agreement drawn up in Pretoria are sending in troublemakers and bringing armed conflicts from the field into the capital", he said.
The peace talks center on the creation of a power-sharing executive to lead the vast former Zaire to its first elections since independence from Belgium in 1960. The delegates agreed in October that Kabila should remain president in the two-year run-up to the polls, with four vice-presidents representing the government, the MLC, the rebel Congolese rally for democracy and the unarmed opposition.
On Thursday the Kinshasa government accused Libya of sending troops, weapons and tanks into the country to back Mbemba's Ugandan-backed rebels. It said Tripoli had sent 14 tanks via Uganda into northern parts of the DRC bordering the Central African Republic.
On Friday Kinshasa officially complained to the United Nations Security Council. Both Libya and Mbemba denied the accusations on Saturday. Libya and the MLC intervened in October to back the president of the Central African Republic, Ange-Felix Patasse, after an attempted coup against him by renegade army chief Francois Bozize.
On Saturday senior military officials from Chad and officers backing Bozize in the Central African Republic told AFP the MLC fighters who come in to shore up Patasse's government had been armed by Libyans. The Chadian officers, who asked not to be named, said Libya was seeking to gain a foothold in the Democratic Republic of Congo so it could extend its influence and business networks in Central Africa.
The war in DRC broke out in 1998 as an attempt to topple then president Laurent Kabila, father of the current president, and at its height involved seven foreign nations.
It is estimated to have left some 2.5 million dead in the mineral-rich but impoverished country.
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