Archbishop says hope of peace remains

Kisangani Roman Catholic Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo said on Wednesday that despite past shortcomings in the process of bringing about peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)"there is some hope" it could still be attained, by virtue of the involvement of the major powers. At a news conference in the Belgian capital, Brussels, he said the involvement of the powers - meaning Britain and France and the United States - had led to the Pretoria peace accord, signed by the presidents of the Congo and Rwanda, to end the war in the DRC. Under it, Rwanda agreed to withdraw its troops from eastern Congo, and the government in Kinshasa undertook to disarm Rwandan dissidents in the Congo. Further evidence of hope, Monsengwo said, was the fact more parties were rallying around a new power-sharing plan calling for a president, two vice-presidents - to be drawn respectively from the rebel Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie and the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo, a prime minister, parliamentary Speaker and a senate president. Notwithstanding his guarded optimism for a possible end of the war, Monsengwo blamed the international community's "reluctance to enlarge the UN forces" in the country, as well as "greedy, irresponsible and power-thirsty" Congolese politicians for the continuing crisis. On the economic aspect of the crisis, he said, "The plundering of DRC's natural resources is a moral and political scandal." He added that the war had caused much human and humanitarian damage, yet nobody spoke up for the right of the victims to compensation, notably in the eastern city of Kisangani, "where foreign troops fought three time over". He said: "The crisis persists because the [Pretoria] accords are badly understood and never respected, and because the facilitation [team of Ketumile Masire] was unable to understand the languages, culture and history of the DRC."