Pretoria targets DRC border security concerns

Peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would not be
possible unless the border security concerns of Angola, Rwanda and Uganda were also dealt with, media reports on Monday quoted South African Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad as saying.

Briefing the National Assembly's foreign affairs committee on peace efforts in the DRC, Pahad said lasting peace in the region also had to be linked to the reconstruction and development of Rwanda itself. Pahad emphasised that the situation in the DRC could not be understood "outside the context of its neighbours".

One of the key aspects of the DRC problem, Pahad said was its regional, continental and local dimensions. "So it's a broader issue that we are going to have to tackle. It cannot be done by us alone - on some aspects we'll do it bilaterally, but in general, we'll have to do it through our interaction in the multilateral institutions," he said.

Meanwhile, Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Zuma was quoted as saying that maybe the time had come for rebel factions within the DRC to settle their own differences without outside help. "Maybe it's high time they start deciding for themselves as Congolese rather than expecting other people all the time to come in and say this must happen," Zuma told journalists in Pretoria over the weekend.