Talks to revive dialogue begin in Abuja

Talks between the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and armed opposition groups fighting in the east and north of the country opened on Thursday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, under the auspices of the United Nations.

UN Assistant Secretary-General Ibrahima Fall told journalists that the talks, scheduled to last two days, were to help revive the peace process that faltered in October when dialogue between the parties to the DRC conflict broke down in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “We are trying to make the meeting less formal so that the factions can feel free to discuss,” said Fall, who represents the UN at the talks.

The government delegation was led by Theophile Mbemba, who heads President Joseph Kabila’s cabinet, sources at the meeting told IRIN. Delegations representing the Ugandan-backed Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC) and the Rwanda-backed Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), were said to have arrived in the Nigerian capital on Wednesday.

During the talks, the parties are expected to prepare the ground for a meeting involving Kabila, Adolphe Onusumba Yemba of the RCD and Jean-Pierre Bemba of the MLC. Early in October Kabila was in Abuja for a meeting with the two rebel leaders, that had been brokered by Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo. However, Yemba and Bemba failed to show up for that meeting.

The DRC has been torn apart by civil war since late President Laurent Kabila led an armed rebellion, backed by Uganda and Rwanda, that overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997. Kabila later fell out with his former backers, who subsequently supported rebel forces who sought to oust him from power.

Following Kabila's assassination in January 2001, his son, Joseph, succeeded him amid renewed efforts towards a negotiated settlement of the war based on the principles of a peace accord the elder Kabila and the armed opposition had reached in Lusaka, Zambia.

The UN has been working to persuade all sides in the conflict to respect a cease-fire agreement signed in 1999 as a necessary step towards ending the war.