UNHCR's Lubbers meets Kagame, Kabila

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Ruud Lubbers, on Friday 1 March visited Congolese refugees in a camp in Gihembe in Byumba Prefecture, northern Rwanda, on the last stop of his four-nation tour of the Great Lakes region, the agency reported. Lubbers expressed the hope that peace would allow hundreds of thousands of the displaced to return home, UNHCR said. The refugees at Gihembe camp are mainly Banyamulenge and Banyamasisi tribespeople, who fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the start of the civil war in 1997, it said. The agency noted that the 16,750 people at the camp are part of the 330,000 Congolese refugees from the DRC spread throughout neighbouring countries. There are also some 1.8 million internally displaced persons in the DRC itself, UNHCR said. Tens of thousands of refugees who fled Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in that country remained in exile throughout the region, it added. On Thursday, Lubbers met DRC President Joseph Kabila, in the capital, Kinshasa, UNHCR said. Kabila had just returned from peace talks in Sun City, South Africa. Lubbers told journalists that he had appealed to Kabila and others leaders to give priority to the needs of the Congolese people, including refugees forced to flee their country because of the conflict, which has caused the deaths of about 2 million people, mainly from malnutrition and disease, the agency added. He also shared Kabila's concerns over the presence of foreign troops in the DRC, including forces from Rwanda and Uganda. He expressed his disappointment at the slow progress of the Sun City talks. "The time has come to give priority to the people," Lubbers said, adding that the final objective of the Sun City peace talks was not to partition power, but to work in the interest of the Congolese people. During the seven-day mission, Lubbers also visited the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.