NAIROBI
The first meeting to launch the preparatory process of an international conference for peace, security and democracy for the Great Lakes region opened on Monday in Nairobi, Kenya, under the aegis of the UN and the African Union (AU).
The two-day meeting brings together UN and AU officials dealing with the Great Lakes region as well as representatives of six "core" countries in the region - Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
The special representative of UN Secretary-General Koffi Annan for the Great Lakes region, Ibrahima Fall, and the AU special envoy to the Great Lakes, Keli Walibuta, co-chaired the opening session, which was officially opened by an assistant minister in Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joab Omino.
"The essential objective of this first focal point meeting of the core countries of the region is to lay the political framework and determine a programme of work and a plan of action for the preparatory process of the international conference," according to a statement issued from Fall's office.
Omino told the delegates that global cooperation to sustain peace in the Great Lakes was necessary and should "include poverty eradication, promotion of democracy, regional support of peace efforts and prevention of armed conflicts and disarmament".
He said the region's political actors should ensure that democracy took root in the Great Lakes countries in order to prevent conflicts and the proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons.
"While addressing the crisis, we need to focus on practical and concrete measures such as collection, safe storage and destruction of arms," he said. The Kenyan government, he added, was committed to providing aid, "however modest" to ensure the success of the proposed international conference.
On his part, Fall said that apart from contributing to the consolidation of the ongoing peace process in Burundi and the DRC, the goal of the proposed conference would be to work "towards the emergence and concerted implementation of a security, stability and development pact, a kind of Marshall Plan, for this troubled region".
Walibuta said the holding of an international conference for the Great Lakes had been a concern for the AU and the UN for about a decade.
"The two organisations have been working very closely to implement the 1995 OAU [Organisation of African Unity] summit decisions and the UN Security Council resolutions on the Great Lakes, especially after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the 1998 war in the DRC," he said.
He told the six country representatives that it was their responsibility to come up with a timeframe for activities leading to the holding of the conference.
Walibuta called upon the international community and donor countries to support the conference's preparatory process, saying "their support is more than needed in each and every phase of this long process whose ultimate goal is to better the life of the people of the Great Lakes region, and to make it a war free zone".
At the end of this first closed-door meeting, the delegates are expected to adopt a report, detailing the form of a Marshall Plan for the Great Lakes, which is the goal of the proposed conference.
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