Belgian, French defence ministers vow continued support

The Belgian and French defence ministers, saying they are pleased with the work of the EU-led peace-enforcement mission in the Ituri District of northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), have pledged continued support for the peace and stability efforts in the country. The announcement followed a two-day visit to the DRC, during which the ministers, Andre Flahaut of Belgium and Michele Alliot-Marie of France, inspected the EU force in Bunia, the main town of Ituri, while in the capital, Kinshasa, they held talks with President Joseph Kabila. "We are convinced that the multinational force has fulfilled its mission and will continue to do so until [the end of its mandate on] 1 September, when MONUC [the UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC] is due to take over," Alliot-Marie said on Saturday after meeting Kabila. "What we have seen in Bunia is reassuring: normal activities have resumed in the town." Meanwhile, massacres were reportedly continuing elsewhere in Ituri, with the latest occurring in the town of Fataki, some 70 km northeast of Bunia. Radio Okapi reported an unknown number of people having been buried alive. The broadcast follows other recent reports of scores of civilians killed by militias in the towns of Drodro and Nizi. Due to prevailing insecurity, MONUC has been unable to deploy outside Bunia, while the EU-led mission sent to reinforce MONUC is not mandated to operate beyond the confines of the town. However, the UN Security Council recently adopted a resolution giving MONUC a stronger mandate and increasing its authorised strength from 8,700 to 10,800 troops. The council also extended the mission's mandate for another year, until 30 July 2004. The two defence ministers said the EU would continue supporting the DRC, particularly to "rebuild its administration and to ensure that justice prevailed", Flahaut said. No specific information about this assistance was offered, although Flahaut had earlier said that Belgium would provide military training for Congolese soldiers. For its part, France's support would focus largely on "policing and justice", according to Pascal Perenec, a press officer with the French embassy in Kinshasa. Meanwhile, on Saturday, a leader of the predominantly Hema militia, Union des patriotes congolais (UPC), said peace could never be achieved in Ituri unless MONUC made its mission clearer. "Before MONUC sends in troops, it is important that they explain to the population of Ituri precisely what they are doing," Justin Lokana, the UPC commander, told IRIN in the Ugandan capital, Kampala. His comments followed a diplomatic visit of the Belgian and French defence ministers to Uganda, which is serving as a rear base for the Ituri intervention. MONUC's chief of public information, Patricia Tome, countered that MONUC communicated regularly with the people of Ituri through four radio stations in Bunia - namely UPC-controlled Radio Candip; Radio Canal Revelation, which broadcasts Voice of America and Radio France Internationale; and Radio Okapi, a joint project of the UN and Fondation Hirondelle. Furthermore, Tome said information would also continue to be communicated through the Ituri interim administration. Remarking that the new MONUC force for Ituri would consist primarily of Bangladeshis with scant knowledge of French or Kiswahili, Lokana said, "This is a big problem. They cannot come to this place having just weapons. They need to talk with the people of Congo." For her part, Tome said that francophone soldiers would also be in place. Lokana said UPC was ready for peace, but that it still rejected the Ituri Pacification Committee (IPC) installed to end violence in the region. "The aim of the IPC was not to integrate people, but to eliminate us [UPC] from the political circle," he told IRIN. Tome, however, said UPC was, in fact, represented within the IPC. "It's up to UPC to participate or to exclude itself," she told IRIN. Nevertheless, Lokana said he thought that the government in the DRC was now in a position to make peace. "Kinshasa is not the Kinshasa of yesterday," he said. "It is a new government, representing all the factions. We are finally in a process of unifying Congo." Economically driven ethnic strife in natural resource-rich Ituri between Hema and Lendu militias had prompted between 200,000 and 350,000 people to flee when fighting intensified in May, humanitarian sources reported. During a news conference on Friday, Azarias Ruberwa, the leader of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD-Goma) former rebel movement and one of four vice-presidents in the DRC's two-year transitional government, called for a solution to persistent fighting in Ituri. On Friday, Kinshasa had dispatched three of its ministers on a peace mission to the region, accompanied by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative to the DRC, William Swing. "We have to come up with solutions for these armed groups who are not signatories to national peace accords like the rest of the country," Ruberwa said. "If this means allocating them posts in the new government, then so be it." Ruberwa's RCD-Goma is allied to the UPC. None of the ethnic-based militias fighting for control of resource-rich Ituri is signatory to the national power-sharing accord that led to the installation on 30 June of a new government led by Kabila.