US envoy in talks over "negative forces"

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Don Yamamoto began talks on Friday with senior officials from Africa's Great Lakes region on plans to arrest and extradite leaders of "negative forces" operating in the troubled region. "This process is an affirmation of the efforts and commitment by these countries to work together in resolving issues that affect all of you — that is the rebels," Yamamoto said in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, during a meeting with senior officials from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda. Rwanda invaded the DRC in 1996, accusing its larger neighbour of harbouring and arming militias responsible for the 1994 genocide that claimed at least 937,000 Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus, according to Rwandan government estimates. The ensuing wars in the Congo sucked in at least six African countries. The UN has estimated that at least three million Congolese have died as a result - mostly from hunger and disease - while millions others are internally displaced in the DRC or outside the country as refugees. Foreign troops pulled out of Congo in 2002 but relations between the mineral-rich state and its neighbours remained tense with Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda accusing it of failing to reign in militias responsible for cross-boarder attacks. We will be discussing "how we can more effectively impose sanctions on the militias," Richard Sezibera, Rwanda's special presidential envoy for the Great Lakes region and head of the Rwandan delegation, said during the opening of the talks. Rwandan President Paul Kagame said in April that his country "no longer" considered Congo as a supporter of Hutu militias operating in its jungles. Congo is scheduled to hold on 30 July its first general elections in 45 years. Yamamoto's visit to Rwanda is part of his four-nation tour of the continent that will also take him to Chad and Ethiopia. He started his trip in Kenya.