British, French ministers admit lack of progress in Congo mission

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine, have said that they have made no progress in their attempts to promote the Congolese peace process, the BBC reported on Wednesday. Both men said they had failed to persuade the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to make any gestures towards peace, the BBC said. The ministers' tour was organised as a joint effort to promote the peace process in Congo, where Rwandan and Ugandan backed Congolese dissidents have been fighting the government in Kinshasa. Burundi also deployed troops on the rebel side. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe sent troops to shore up the government. A cease-fire, reached under the Lusaka peace accord, is now holding but Namibia is the only country to have withdrawn all its troops. Straw and Vedrine had been hoping to persuade Rwandan President Paul Kagame to withdraw his troops. However, Rwandan Foreign Minister Andre Bumaya said that would only happen when anti-government Rwandan Hutu militia in the Congo had been disarmed, news agencies reported. Rwanda has long insisted that its troops are in Congo to counter the threats by this rebel group, who were responsible for the killing of about one million ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Congolese President Joseph Kabila had also been pressed to begin disarming and repatriating about 1,800 Rwandan Hutu militia members now camped at the Kamina military base in Congo's Katanga Province, agencies reported. Kabila had agreed to do so in principle, Radio France Internationale reported, but said that this presupposed a Rwandan troop withdrawal. In August 2001, Britain announced an offer of US $7 million to help disarm and demobilise the Hutu extremists, AFP reported. On Monday, however, AFP added, Kabila called on Britain to "unblock" the peace process and said Britain "would just have to say one word on Rwanda and Uganda, whose troops are on DRC territory, for things to change". Following an overnight visit in the Congo on Monday, Straw and Vedrine spent Tuesday in Rwanda and Burundi and continued their three-day tour of the Great Lakes region with a final stop in Uganda on Wednesday.