DRC withdrawal under consideration

Zimbabwe indicated publicly for the first time on Thursday that it was considering a phased withdrawal of its troops from
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), possibly within coming weeks.

But a defence ministry spokesman told IRIN an end to the controversial intervention would be linked to the military situation on the ground and the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers.

The spokesman was reacting to a report in the independent weekly, 'The Financial Gazette', which quoted "authoritative" sources as saying that under a preliminary plan, 5,000 troops would be withdrawn at the end of June, with the remainder of the estimated 11,000 soldiers pulling out in July once UN peacekeeping forces are expected to have been fully deployed.

"It is premature at this stage to give any troop numbers or any dates," the spokesman said. "The ministry of defence has its figures and its plans and any such plan would be dependent on certain things happening."

Defence Minister Moven Mahachi also hinted at an imminent withdrawal. "It is possible that we may start pulling out our troops soon. It may be by the end of June or early July, it depends on a combination of factors," Mahachi told the newspaper. "But by and large, as soon as the United Nations peacekeeping forces are fully deployed, we will pull out according to the terms of the peace agreement which has been worked out."

Five African nations have intervened in the DRC war, with Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia fighting on the side of President Laurent-Desiré Kabila, and Rwanda and Uganda backing rebels seeking to overthrow him. Rwanda and Uganda have already started withdrawing from the eastern Congolese diamond city of Kisangani, where fierce clashes broke out between the two former allies earlier this month.

The newspaper quoted other military sources as saying about 300 Zimbabwean soldiers had lost their lives in the intervention which started in August 1998.

"In any war there are casualties," Mahachi said when asked by the newspaper to confirm the figures. "Yes, there have been a handful of deaths of our troops in the DRC and we have been compiling the figures. I am not at liberty to disclose the actual number of deaths before the war is completely over. We have made these deaths known to the affected families but we will
make the figure known to the nation at the appropriate time."

The newspaper also quoted sources as saying Zimbabwe, which has found itself stuck in the DRC longer than it had anticipated, was now impatiently waiting for the deployment of the peacekeepers to cut costs, which the government has put at US $3 million a month. Critics have blamed the government for using scarce foreign exchange to finance a war considered of no strategic importance to Zimbabwe at a time when the country is facing a critical shortage of hard currency to buy fuel and electricity.

The UN is to deploy 500 military observers and 5,000 soldiers to maintain peace in the vast central African country, the third largest on the continent. South Africa and Nigeria have already pledged battalions.