Officials review calendar of regional conference preparatory process

National coordinators of seven countries in Africa's Great Lakes region began a meeting on Monday in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the criteria for membership into the International Conference on the Great Lakes region, the Office of the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for the Great Lakes Region reported. The meeting, chaired by UN Secretary-General's representative to the region, Ibrahima Fall, and African Union (AU) Special Envoy Keli Walubita, will also review the calendar of the conference's preparatory process that was agreed upon in June 2003. In a statement, Fall's office said national coordinators from the "core" countries - Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda - would be joined for the meeting by those from Zambia, which became the latest core member after the country was admitted on 19 December 2003 at a meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Fall's office reported that countries such as Angola, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo had applied to become core members but decisions on their admission would be taken after the criteria of admission was made clear by the seven core members. The review of the calendar of the preparatory process was necessitated by delays in the setting up and functioning of the various national preparatory commissions, Fall’s office said. Fall described the Addis meeting as crucial since it would pave the way for the smooth running of the preparatory process of the conference. The international conference on the Great Lakes region - on peace, security, democracy and development in the region - was proposed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and backed by the AU, to redress the region's problems.