European development ministers meet Kabila

A delegation international development ministers from The Netherlands, Norway and the UK had "positive" talks with President Joseph Kabila and the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in Kinshasa on Tuesday. The visit by Clare Short, the UK International Development Secretary, Eveline Herfkens, Minister of Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, and Hilde Frafjord Johnson, Minister of International Development and Human Rights of Norway, follows a joint visit by British and French foreign ministers to Kinshasa three weeks ago. Short told Reuters that there had been a notable change in mood in the DRC in the past six months, noting that previously "the atmosphere was extremely negative with everyone blaming everyone else", she said. "Developments have been stuck, but now it's different. In both meetings that I had [with the president and Foreign Minister Leonard She Okitundu], the atmosphere was very positive and we were looking for ways forward." For his part, Okitundu said he hoped the British government would help the DRC to improve relations with Uganda, which still maintains forces in eastern DRC and supports several rebel movements in the region. However, the European ministers had no particular announcements to make about aid for the DRC. Asked how she justified the disparity in aid received by Uganda and Rwanda compared with the DRC, Short said that was "an old question" to which she had replied in writing, and there was a need to move forward. One aim of this visit was for the ministers to look at how European aid could be better coordinated, she said. Short said it was now "a time of real opportunity" in the DRC. "We need to move forward on all fronts, MONUC [the French acronym for the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC] deploying to the east, and then voluntary disarmament, with a lot of young men in the forest who may well want to go home." "Then there needs to be pressure on the external parties to draw back," she added. "Hopefully the inter-Congolese dialogue [due to begin in Sun City, South Africa, on 25 February] will result in some sort of transitional government, and there would then be a united country where the World Bank and IMF can engage in preparing for debt relief."