Kigali pessimistic about early agreement

The Rwandan government believes a DRC ceasefire is not imminent. “A ceasefire within three, four months is not expected soon,” the private Rwanda News Agency reported Minister in the President’s Office Patrick Mazimhaka as saying yesterday. The insistence on the signing of an agreement, “and not the content of an agreement is definitely symptomatic of an impatient world that wants to run away from the problem and not solve the problem”. “If you listen to the government of Congo today, it sounds exactly the way it sounded in August,” he said. “We are very far from reaching a settlement, but then there are signs of hope.”

UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has completed a mission to DRC in which he focussed on principles of engagement for humanitarian organisations, an OCHA statement said today (Thursday). The principles of neutrality and impartiality were highlighted along with the need to address urgent humanitarian needs of the people and vulnerable groups wherever they are located. The DRC government responded favourably to these humanitarian principles endorsed by the international community, the statement said.