RCD reportedly signs agreement

Rebels of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) signed a ceasefire agreement in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, on Tuesday under a compromise formula negotiated by South Africa, news agencies said. Reuters reported that the signing ceremony was witnessed by Zambian President Frederick Chiluba and ministers of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as Rwanda and Uganda. Leaders of the six nations involved in the DRC conflict signed the accord on 10 July. Great Lakes analyst Richard Cornwell of the Institute for Security Studies, located in South Africa, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that the signing - achieved through intense diplomatic pressure on the rebels - was "a minor breakthrough at least" in a climate where there was considerable ground for scepticism about the chances for peace, but that a key issue remained to be decided in the days and weeks to come: who would represent the Congolese rebels on the Joint Military Commission (JMC) mandated to supervise the ceasefire, and on what basis? The Lusaka accord was a broad framework document designed to draw in and mollify the various belligerents, said Cornwell, but the whole deal still rested on what would happen on the ground - not just 24 hours after the signing, when a military ceasefire is supposed to come into place, but later on with the number and seriousness of ceasefire violations, and the even more difficult disarming of militia groups, including the Rwandan Interahamwe. UN to deploy military liaison officers by the weekend The UN on Monday announced that the first 17 of 90 military liaison officers and advisers to be deployed in capitals in and around the DRC to support the peace agreement - initially in Kinshasa, Kigali, Kampala and possibly Lusaka - are expected to be in place by 5 September. That would soon be followed by deployment in the capitals of the other state signatories of the Lusaka ceasefire, a press announcement stated. The Security Council voted unanimously on 6 August to authorise a three-month deployment of 90 military officers, together with the necessary civilian, political, humanitarian and administrative staff, to prepare for a possible wider UN role under the terms of the Lusaka peace accord. The Security Council on Friday agreed to a proposed list of countries to contribute military personnel to the preliminary deployment of UN military liaison officers, which included: Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Benin, Bolivia, Britain, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Ghana, India, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Nepal, Pakistan, Poland, Senegal, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Tanzania, Uruguay and Zambia. The officers would be deployed in the capitals of the signatory states, the provisional headquarters of the JMC and, as security permits, to the rear headquarters of the main belligerents in the DRC, and to other areas deemed necessary by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, a press release received by IRIN stated. UN flight brings medicine and hope of educational advancement A direct, cross-line humanitarian flight between Kinshasa and Goma left the DRC capital on Monday, carrying supplies for the second round of polio vaccinations in the east. On its return flight to Kinshasa, the UN plane will carry a North Kivu provincial education inspector and three boxes of examination scripts for last year's state exams in North and South Kivu provinces, a humanitarian source told IRIN. In July 1998, the students of secondary and high schools, and of a number of universities and institutes in the eastern provinces, completed their state exams, the correction of which is done only in Kinshasa. Because of the war, the scripts remained uncorrected in the rebel-held east and thousands of students could not obtain their marks or qualifications, which has become a sources of tension and instability in the Kivus. The UN flight will bring the exam scripts to Kinshasa for marking, in what UN sources in the DRC have described as "a little but important step towards national reconciliation" to coincide with the signature of the Lusaka peace deal by the RCD. Tutsi detainees flown to Benin Some 180 ethnic Tutsis held under "protective custody" in Kinshasa for the past year were on Monday flown to Cotonou, Benin, as part of an operation arranged by the US government and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), an OCHA official in Kinshasa told IRIN on Tuesday. The Tutsis will remain in Benin for "a month or two", during which they will be assisted by UNHCR and will undergo US immigration formalities. "After that, they will be flown to the US," the official said. Another 180 detained Tutsis are scheduled to be flown from Kinshasa to Benin in the next few days, he said. The Office of the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the DRC assisted in planning the relocation operation by serving as an "intermediary" between IOM and the government, a OCHA/UNDP bulletin said. It said a number of persons of Tutsi origin who had remained in hiding since August 1998 had been encouraged by recent developments to come out of concealment. Some had started to arrive at the "protective custody centres" in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, where some 1,500 Congolese Tutsis were currently registered, the report added.