New peace efforts 1999.3.1

This weekend saw a flurry of diplomatic initiatives aimed at ending the seven-month rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that has pitted DRC leader Laurent Kabila against rebels of the Rally for Democratic Congo (RCD). At least five heads of state were engaged in different consultations to agree on the contents of a peace plan that Zambia’s president Frederick Chiluba is championing. Namibia’s president Sam Nujoma was first on the trail on a mission that brought him to South Africa where he met president Nelson Mandela. Although no formal statement was released on the content of their meeting, it is believed the DRC issue topped the agenda of the two leaders. Nujoma’s forces, with contingents from Angola and Zimbabwe, have been fighting on Kabila’s side in the DRC for the last three months. Chiluba himself was on a visit to Rwanda to meet with president Pasteur Bizimungu, when he was forced to cut it short after a series of bomb explosions rocked his country’s capital, Lusaka. Chiluba’s plan, according to sources, provides for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of foreign troops from the DRC, the deployment of a UN-backed peacekeeping force and security guarantees for Rwanda and Uganda. The European Union (EU) has reportedly supported the plan. Mozambican president Joaquim Chissano, who is also the vice-chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) also travelled to Luanda, Angola to hold talks with Angola’s president Jose dos Santos on ways of bringing peace to the DRC. South African Foreign Minister Alfred Nzo and Tony Lloyd, Britain’s Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, also travelled on separate missions to Luanda. The US sent Thomas Pickering, the Under-Secretary of State for political affairs, to Harare, Zimbabwe, where he met with president Robert Mugabe in talks which Pickering described as “wonderful”. Pickering, who met with Mugabe for two hours, started a five-nation African tour in Zimbabwe which will focus on the situation in Central Africa. He said Washington “intends to give the continent increased attention”. This flurry of activity comes a week after Kabila’s announcement that he has disbanded his cabinet and allowed political activity by lifting restrictions against some veterans of opposition parties that had waged a struggle against the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and against Kabila himself.