Wamba says partition precluded by Kabale deal

RCD-ML leader Ernest Wamba dia Wamba said in a New Year’s Eve statement that one of the most important aspects of the ‘common front’ of Congolese rebel movements established in Kabale, Uganda, on 21 December was that it dispelled any notion of the partition of the DRC. The common approach formally reaffirmed the rebels’ attachment and loyalty to “a lasting peace, national unity, reconciliation and democratisation”, and should scatter “retrograde deviations like that of even promoting the dream of partition ... which is in total contradiction with the defence of national [territorial] integrity,” Wamba said on rebel-controlled Bunia radio.

While remaining political differences and a degree of mutual distrust precluded a merger between the three rebel groups, the leaders’ forum and rotating membership of two joint commissions on political/diplomatic and military issues were an example of the “collective leadership” the DRC could expect in terms of a political future, he added. DRC: Failed talks between MLC, Kinshasa reported Jean-Pierre Bemba has said a meeting between his MLC movement and the Kinshasa government on Thursday to explore possibilities of a settlement was unsuccessful, and alleged renewed clashes on Friday in its wake, Associated Press (AP) reported. Bemba had sent MLC secretary-general Oliver Kamitatu to a meeting with DRC Interior Minister Gaetan Kakudji in Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic, in the first such contact since the war started in August 1998, but the talks had yielded no result, AP reported on Friday. Kakudji had been accompanied to the talks by Bemba’s father, DRC minister for the economy Bemba Saolona, the agency said. Bemba claimed to have repulsed a government advance on Libanda and killed up to 80 soldiers on Friday, but there was no independent confirmation of the claims, AP added.