Opposition leader in peace call

Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, the leader of the Union pour la democratie at le progress social (UDPS) opposition party in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) met President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and former South African President Thabo Mbeki, and subsequently Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, on Tuesday. During the meetings, Tshisekedi had called on the three “to use their influence to prevail on [President Laurent-Desire] Kabila to respect the terms of the [Lusaka] accord”, the German news agency (dpa) reported on Tuesday. The agency said Tshisekedi, speaking after the meeting, had expressed optimism that African leaders like Mbeki, Mandela and Obasanjo “could swing the sympathy of Kabila and the rest of the world to ensure that the DRC witnessed democratic governance”.

He said: “We in the DRC are suffering from Kabila’s dictatorship and there is a great need today to allow the Lusaka accord to work so that we can have democratic governance and make progress.” As things were at the moment, Kabila “is ruling the country without a budget and the country is in ruins. This must be stopped to allow for democracy and development,” the agency quoted him as saying.

Kabila was one of the signatories to the Lusaka accord of 10 July 1999. It provided for a ceasefire to apply to all the parties to the conflict in the DRC, to be followed in turn by the entry of UN peacekeepers and a round-table conference in which all the country’s politicians would participate to find ways of restoring democracy.