British, French ministers end regional tour

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and his French counterpart, Hubert Vedrine, ended their three-day tour of the Great Lakes region on Wednesday, with no reports of progress in ending the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). "It’s hard to assess the tour as a success, but we have a better understanding of what contribution we can make to unblock the Lusaka process," Reuters reported Vedrine as saying after he and Straw had met Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday. The ministers' tour was organised as a joint effort to promote the peace process in the DRC. Fighting there has involved Rwanda and Uganda, which sent troops to Congo in 1998, to back rebels opposed to the late president, Laurent-Desire Kabila. Burundi also deployed troops on the rebel side, while Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe supported the government. A cease-fire, reached under the Lusaka peace accord, is holding, but Namibia is the only country to have totally withdrawn its troops. Ugandan Foreign Minister James Wapakhabulo said the main stumbling block to the peace process was regional leaders’ inability to meet and make the Lusaka peace agreement a reality, Reuters reported. "We discussed the issue of Ugandan troops being deployed in DRC, and President Museveni assured us that he is ready to stand by the Lusaka peace accord, which called for [the] orderly withdrawal of troops," AFP quoted Straw saying. Museveni denied that Uganda had recently sent troops into the DRC, saying that a recent deployment of Ugandan soldiers there was a "minor border operation". He said Uganda had withdrawn 12 of its 14 battalions from the Congo in line with the Lusaka peace agreement, which calls for a total withdrawal of all foreign troops, AFP reported. He added that although the Allied Democratic Forces, the main rebel group operating from the Congo, had been neutralised, its remnants and other rebel groups, such as the former Uganda national army, the Lord’s Resistance Army, the National Army for the Liberation of Uganda and the West Nile Bank Front, were still operating there and must be disarmed under the Lusaka peace accord. Referring to the past clashes between the Rwandan and Ugandan troops in Kisangani, northeastern DRC, Kampala’s New Vision newspaper reported Museveni as saying: "I am very happy with our improving relations with our neighbours, Rwanda and Sudan. We contained our unfortunate misunderstanding with Rwanda, and there has been some rapprochement with Sudan." Straw and Vedrine also met Jean-Pierre Bemba, the leader of the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo, and Mbusa Nyamwisi, leader of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie-mouvement de liberation, which are fighting pro-government forces in northeastern DRC. Meanwhile, Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel is in Rwanda to discuss regional issues and assess the problem of Congolese refugees who have been displaced by the volcanic lava flow on 17 January of Mt Nyiragongo, Radio Rwanda reported on Wednesday.