Foreign minister replaced as court hearings held

Tuesday’s cabinet reshuffle in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in which the controversial foreign minister Yerodia Abdoulaye Ndombasi was replaced, comes in the same week as the International Court of Justice in The Hague held public hearings on an international arrest warrant for the minister issued by Belgium. Analysts say the timing of the reshuffle is important, noting also that it comes in the wake of a visit to the DRC by the Belgian deputy foreign minister, Annemie Neyts. At the ICJ, the DRC has called for the immediate revocation of the warrant against Yerodia on charges of inciting ethnic hatred, issued by Belgian magistrate D.Van Dermeersch. On Monday - the first day of the public hearings - representatives for the DRC put forward their arguments, stating that the arrest warrant was “contentious”. It violated the principle according to which one state cannot exert its power on the territory of another as well as the principle of sovereign equality between all UN member states, DRC representative Jacques Masangu-a-Mwanza said. Furthermore, the warrant violated the diplomatic immunity of a foreign minister according to the 1961 Vienna convention on diplomatic relations. Neither had Yerodia been able to carry out his functions as foreign minister, the representative stated. On Tuesday, Belgium responded by stressing that the affair in no way represented a rupture in ties with the DRC, “a country with which Belgium has special links”. One of Belgium’s representatives, Daniel Bethlehem, explained that the arrest warrant “was not issued in a vacuum”. “It came against the background of the events in the Great Lakes region of Africa in the past few years - the genocide in Rwanda, the displacement of people from that conflict across the borders into neighbouring countries, the overthrow of president Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and the subsequent armed conflict in the DRC involving the forces of a number of other states,” he stated. Belgium’s action was in conformity with calls by the UN Security Council for investigating atrocities committed in the DRC and incitement to ethnic hatred. “The judge was acting within the framework of action urged on the international community by the Security Council,” Bethlehem said. Speaking over DRC state radio in 1998 - the year of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) rebellion against President Laurent-Desire Kabila - Yerodia had described the Tutsi ethnic group, which he held responsible for Kinshasa’s problems, as “vermin that must be methodically eliminated”. Noting that Yerodia was no longer foreign minister, another representative, Jan Devadder, added he did not know how this development would impinge on the case. Hannelie de Beer, a DRC analyst at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, told IRIN on Wednesday that replacing Yerodia at this juncture was a “good move” by Kabila as the DRC government was facing a “credibility problem”. “This has taken some of the pressure off Kabila,” she said. “The ICJ case is too prominent”. She said the government realised it had a “crisis of legitimacy” and had to do something. De Beer also believed that visiting Belgian deputy foreign minister, Annemie Neyts, may have influenced the decision. “Maybe Kabila thought Belgium would drop the case,” she noted. She added it was unlikely Kabila had abandoned Yerodia, a powerful man who is still in the government as minister of state for national education, demonstrating his “continued importance” for the DRC leader.