No meeting between feuding RCD-ML leaders

No meeting has yet taken place in the Ugandan capital Kampala between rival factions of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML), officials from both sides said on Wednesday. “I have met with President Yoweri Museveni twice,” embattled RCD-ML leader Ernest Wamba dia Wamba told IRIN. “We discussed to see whether a meeting with the opposing side was feasible and whether or not the observers should be invited,” he said. “We have to discuss why some of the conditions set out in the previous agreement in Kampala were not implemented.” Wamba and his former deputies Mbusa Nyamwisi and Tibasiima Ateenyi, who now oppose him, have been in Kampala since last week at the invitation of the Ugandan government, to try and resolve the movement’s ongoing leadership wrangles which culminated in violence in the northeastern town of Bunia earlier this month.

Wamba said Bunia was calm and the population were “anxious for my return”. He claimed the “mutineers” were in disarray and some were reportedly moving south towards Beni. Humanitarian sources in Bunia confirmed to IRIN on Wednesday that the situation was calm and that Wamba was “back in control” since the last three days. They said Nyamwisi’s men had been captured. However, Nyamwisi’s side maintained that “nobody is in charge in Bunia”. “Professor Wamba should rest,” a spokesman for Nyamwisi told IRIN on Wednesday. “He has no power on the ground and has not been given leadership clearance by the RCD-ML assembly.”