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The Lusaka peace process is "on track" having been boosted by recent high-level contact between the main foreign protagonists as well greater diplomatic interest from the US, Zimbabwe said on Thursday. Rwandan and Ugandan contacts with Harare in the past week, together with two separate US delegations this week - led by US Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke, and Democratic Party leader Richard Gephardt - reflected "real political will to follow through with this", Zimbabwe's presidential
spokesman George Charamba told IRIN on Thursday. "The general impression is that the US is throwing its moral and material weight behind the Lusaka peace agreement, a factor which had been missing all along," Charamba added.
This week's amnesty offer by Uganda to its own rebel movements and its rapprochement with Sudan could also help stabilise the region, Charamba said. "President Mugabe has been trying to communicate to Rwanda and Uganda that the hostile forces that spill over into the DRC are the direct consequences of their exclusionary politics at home," Charamba added. [see IRIN-SA item headlined "ZIMBABWE-DRC: Peace process on track"
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