August 6, 1999
UN - The Security Council on Friday unanimously approved a resolution authorizing the deployment of up to 90 UN military liaison personnel to help implement an inter-African peace accord for the Democratic Republic of Congo. The resolution described the accord, signed by six African states in the Zambian capital Lusaka on July 10, as a "viable basis for the resolution of the conflict" between rebels and forces loyal to President Laurent Kabila.
It authorized the deployment of up to 90 United Nations military liaison personnel for a three-month period to the capitals of the six countries that signed the Lusaka agreement. Kabila signed the accord together with his supporters, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The other signatories, Rwanda and Uganda, back the rebels.
UN sources said the military personnel would be sent at first to Kinshasa and perhaps Lusaka. They would only later go to the other capitals. In the light of the team's reports, up to 500 other military personnel might later be dispatched, the sources said. The Security Council resolution put particular onus on the rebel movements to bring peace to DR Congo, a vast country formerly known as Zaire. It expressed "deep concern" that the main rebel movement, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) had not signed the August 1 ceasefire agreement based on the Lusaka accord and called upon it to do so "without delay."
It also called upon all parties to the conflict, "in particular the rebel movements," to cease hostilities. Security Council Resolution 1258 was passed by 15 votes to none without debate. The mandate of the UN personnel is to help the Joint Military Commission set up under the Lusaka agreement to establish and maintain contact with the belligerents, and to provide the JMC with technical help to implement the ceasefire. If security conditions permit they and other civilian staff would also go to the "rear military headquarters of the main belligerents," the resolution said.
On Thursday, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said that preparatory plans were not affected by air raids, which had killed about 550 people in DR Congo. "We have made all the preparatory work," he told reporters. "We have designed some observers who may go in, but we are waiting to see what develops." Annan was speaking after the Uganda-backed Congo Liberation Movement reported that 384 civilians and 184 soldiers were killed in air raids early Thursday on Makanza and Bogbonga, two towns on the banks of the Congo River, about 700 kilometers (420miles) north of the capital Kinshasa.
There was no immediate independent confirmation of the raids, which the MLC said were carried out by an Antonov 12 plane from Kinshasa. In Zambia - the country which hosted the peace talks - Regional Cooperation Minister Amama Mbabazi warned that such incidents could cause the ceasefire to collapse. "If we continue committing these violations, then the whole agreement will collapse, which is not in anybody's best interest. That is why we feel that those who are supposed to sign this agreement should sign, " Mbabazi added.
